World finance ministers meeting in Washington last week for the a.g.m. of the World Bank and IMF had yet another chance to take decisive action in cancelling developing countries' unpayable debts. As the millennium approaches, another opportunity has been missed.

The IMF and World Bank presented their 182 member-states with a rehash of their failed Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC) as the new hope for an end to the debt crisis.

Yet HIPC mark 2 bears all the hallmarks of mark 1 - namely long waiting periods for relief, compliance with harsh IMF conditions underpin the initiative; and many countries will still spend more on servicing their debts than they do on health and education.

Take Zambia, one of Ireland's priority aid countries. After Zambia receives debt relief under this revised scheme, it will still pay more on debt repayments than on healthcare. Yet life expectancy in Zambia is expected to drop to 33 years. This begs the question: is the international community really serious about tackling the debt crisis?

The people of Ireland certainly hope they are as more than 800,000 have expressed their support for debt cancellation by next year by signing the Jubilee 2000 petition. These signatures were presented to the G7 leaders in Cologne as part of more than 17 million signatures worldwide. Back in June we hoped that the G7 would respond to this enormous display of public concern, yet at Cologne they failed to do so.

The Cologne initiative largely boiled down to a further $14 billion new money for debt relief. However, the total outstanding debt of the lowest income countries is well over $200 billion.

The Irish Jubilee campaign wanted the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, in addressing the IMF and World Bank annual meetings last Wednesday, to make a strong call for debt cancellation in recognition of the huge mandate given by people from all over Ireland. Once again hopes were dashed.

Although he acknowledged the strength of the popular support for Jubilee 2000, Mr McCreevy threw his weight behind the remodelled HIPC. However, in indicating that a HIPC mark 3 may be needed, he revealed his lack of confidence in the revised initiative.

HIPC stands in a very long line of failed debt initiatives stretching right back to the start the 1980s. This failure has meant that the development chances of a whole generation of people have been lost.

Uganda's experience illustrates the need to replace such "initiatives" with clear-cut and meaningful debt cancellation. It has already had two exits from its debt crisis, one in 1995 and another in 1998, when it was the first country to receive debt relief under the HIPC. Yet again its debt has become unsustainable as national income dropped due to a substantial fall in prices for its main exports. This proves the case for deeper debt cancellation.

So how does the Irish Government fit into all this? It has argued that it cannot make a strong call for debt cancellation as it is not a direct creditor, but as a member of the fund and World Bank we are an indirect creditor. Moreover, these institutions are developing countries' harshest creditors.

While these countries may default on the debt owed to rich countries, they face serious consequences if they fall into arrears to the IMF and the World Bank. This can take the form of a withholding of all financial support, as a green light from the fund is the trigger for the bulk of international financial assistance. This places extreme pressure on countries to redirect scarce resources to repay these debts at the cost of the health, welfare and the lives of their own people.

The IMF and World Bank also operate as an international financial police force. They lay down the economic reform programmes which countries must pursue to receive meagre amounts of debt relief. In Washington these programmes are known as "structural adjustment", in Africa they have been renamed "stomach adjustment".

Ireland's priority aid countries - Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Ethiopia and Mozambique - are all heavily indebted. Irish aid to these countries is being undermined by the outflow of debt repayments to their various creditors. In fact Irish aid is helping Mozambique and Tanzania to repay their debts to the IMF.

Last year Ireland produced its first public policy on the debt crisis. Central to this was a $31.5 million funding package for debt relief.

Controversy around this package was sparked by the inclusion of a proposal to fund the IMF's Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF). This is the IMF's lending programme to the poorest countries, involving stringent economic reform conditions. A recent external review was highly critical of how these programmes are devised. Put simply, the programmes are largely written in Washington with spaces left to be filled in by the borrower government.

Given this lack of local ownership it is not surprising that programmes have a 75 per cent breakdown rate. As countries have to comply with ESAF for six years to qualify for debt relief, such breakdowns mean that desperately needed debt relief is further delayed. Hence the Debt and Development Coalition opposed the Government's decision to make Ireland's first contribution to ESAF.

In the face of worldwide criticism of ESAF, the IMF has decided to give it a friendlier name: the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility. One member of the US congress, critical of the old ESAF, was heard to say, "You can rename it `Charlie' and we will still oppose it". In meetings with IMF staff over the past week in Washington, members of the Debt and Development Coalition found no evidence that the fund was willing to rethink its rigid economic policies. The proposed changes to ESAF appear to be more cosmetic than real.

Given Ireland's membership of the World Bank and IMF, and in particular, recent financial support for the controversial ESAF, we share the responsibility for their impact on the lives of people throughout the developing world. If debts were cancelled, this would drastically reduce developing countries' dependence on funding from the IMF and World Bank.

There are 90 days to go to the new millennium; there is still time for our Government to back the call for debt cancellation.

Jean Somers is co-ordinator of the Debt and Development Coalition, Ireland, part of the Jubilee 2000 campaign.