Sir, - Last weekend, Japan spent $570 million on the G8 summit in Okinawa, £500 million sterling, the costliest G8 summit ever.
This sum could have been used to cancel one year of debt-servicing payments for Guyana, Rwanda, Laos, Zambia, Nicaragua, Benin, Cambodia and Haiti. It could have funded the immunisation of 20 million children from six killer diseases. It could have provided clean water for 5.2 million people in Africa.
Instead it was squandered on an obscene spectacle, in lavish and extravagant surroundings. One thousand artistes and musicians were flown in to entertain VIPs from a specially designed floating stage. Security, for the leaders of the free world, was guaranteed by 22,000 personnel on the ground and eight destroyers along the shore, at a cost of over $300 million.
Despite huge public pressure, despite pleas from the Pope, Kofi Annan, the Dalai Lama, despite meeting with the African leaders in Tokyo on the day before the summit, the G8 did nothing but make more promises on debt. At Cologne last year they promised $100 billion debt relief and delivered barely $15 billion. What price their promises?
Japan did pledge $15 billion for information technology training in the developing world but Japan is a major IT developer. On Friday night Jubilee 2000 campaigners in Okinawa gathered on the beach opposite the conference centre and burned a laptop computer. The flames lit up their message to the G8: "This is worth nothing, until you drop the debt". IT means little to the billion people who lack electricity, water, homes, jobs, schools and healthcare. One commentator asked: "Is the message from the millennium G8 summit an echo of Marie Antoinette: `Let them eat cybercake'?".
Mr Clinton has pledged $300 million from surplus farm crops for school lunches. But 125 million children in the developing world are not in school; their parents can't afford the fees demanded in the name of structural adjustments. In some African countries more teachers die of Aids each year than the number of new teachers leaving training college.
The developing world repays $60 million every day to the rich world. Well-spun words on promoting better health and education for all children are worth little in the face of such figures.
To say the summit was a wasted opportunity is an understatement. To say the debt campaigners are angered and disappointed is true. However, each setback is a challenge to redouble our efforts and bring the facts of the debt crisis to even more people.
The United Nations millennium summit of 130 heads of state takes place from September 5th to 8th and the World Bank/ IMF Autumn meetings take place in late September. Over the coming months, Jubilee 2000 Ireland and the worldwide Jubilee movement will intensify the pressure for real change in this millennium year. What is demanded is justice, not charity. -Yours, etc.,
Pat Raleigh, Maire Kelly, Jubilee 2000 Ireland Committee. Grace Park Road, Dublin 9.