LONDON (AFP) - Campaign groups welcomed a commitment by Britain to write off debts owed by the world's poorest nations to the World Bank, a move they said should pressure other Group of Seven rich countries to follow suit.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has said his Labour government will unilaterally write off its share of debts owed to the World Bank and other development banks.
Britain has put aside 100 million pounds per year (147 million euros, 180 million dollars) until 2015 in order to clear the debt, a treasury spokeswoman said.
This amounts to about one billion pounds without allowing for the future erosion of the value of money.
"The UK is often at the forefront of trying to pursue international debt relief and it has to be congratulated on the fact it has (again) taken a lead," said Peter Hardstaff, head of policy for the World Development Movement.
Oxfam's campaigns director Adrian Lovett described the government's move -- which comes ahead of a World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting later this week -- as "bold and very welcome".
"This is Gordon Brown at his boldest, throwing down the gauntlet to the other G7 members ahead of next week's IMF-World Bank meetings," Lovett said.
The G7 nations include Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
The treasury said the debt relief would be available to all low-income countries "with sufficiently robust public expenditure management systems".
This would include: Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guyana, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda, it said.
"Unfortunately those countries that will receive this write-off from the UK still have to jump through all the hoops of economic conditionality imposed by the World Bank," Hardstaff said.
Brown announced the government's move in a speech Sunday to about 400 debt-relief and fair-trade activists in Brighton, southern England, where the ruling Labour Party is holding its annual conference.
"Although there is no international agreement on 100-percent multilateral debt relief, Britain will do more," Brown said.
"We will pay our share of the multilateral debt repayments of reforming low-income countries," he said.
"We will make payments in their stead to the World Bank and African Development Bank for the portion that relates to Britain's share of this debt," the chancellor added.
"We do this alone today but I urge other countries to follow so that indebted countries are relieved of the burden of servicing all unpayable multilateral debt."
Britain holds nearly 10 percent of the total debt owed to the World Bank and other development banks, which itself amounts to 70 percent of the money owed by the world's poorest nations.
Brown's announcement dovetails with Prime Minister Tony Blair's intention of making the fight against poverty in Africa a core theme of Britain's turn at the helm of the Group of Eight and the European Union during 2005.
In his speech, which was greeted with a standing ovation at the end, Brown lashed out at rich nations for failing to do more to end farm subsidies and clear away trade barriers which keep poor countries poor.