WASHINGTON (AFP) - World Bank President James Wolfensohn hailed a British proposal to write off 10 percent of the debt owed the World Bank by poor countries, describing it as "enormously constructive."
"I think it's an enormously constructive suggestion," Wolfensohn told journalists here ahead of week end meetings of Group of Seven finance chiefs as well as World Bank and International Monetary Fund policymakers.
"We have continously been in favor of debt relief on an equitable basis," he said.
"What we are looking at now is an issue of increasing debt relief or taking it from the levels we have already, which is roughly two thirds to 100 percent debt relief ... That is for me a very good step."
The British initiative was unveiled on Sunday by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown in a speech to some 400 debt-relief and fair-trade activists.
"We will pay our share of the multilateral debt repayments of reforming low-income countries," he said.
"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.
Its offer to forgive such obligations is seen by development agencies as cranking up pressure on other key western creditors -- notably France, the United States and Canada -- to follow Britain's lead.
Wolfensohn was asked about another development proposal, a call by France and Brazil for a global tax on certain transactions that could be applied to fighting poverty.
The initiative was presented in New York last week at a development conference organized by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Wolfensohn noted that the United States appeared unenthusiastic about the proposed tax but that France was determined to see its implementation in one form or another.
He nonetheless described the conference as a success.
"The important element of that meeting was that it was a statement by 30 or 40 heads of state and that despite what's going in the world today the issues of poverty and development are central ... The meeting was very positive."