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France said on Friday the question of wiping clean Iraq's enormous debt was a matter for the Paris Club and could not be decided bilaterally.
The Paris Club, set up in 1961, is an informal multilateral group of official creditors whose role is to find coordinated and sustainable solutions to payment difficulties experienced by debtor nations.
Experts say the Iraqi debt could amount to more than 100 billion US dollars. Combined with claims from the Gulf War and debts on contracts, the amount might swell to more than 300 billion dollars.
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau told reporters that his country was reluctant to launch an oral war over the question. It must be discussed within the 10-member Paris Club.
Rivasseau's remarks came a day after Deputy United States Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz suggested that France, Russia and Germany consider writing off the debts owed by Iraq to help rebuild the battered economy in that country.
The Iraqi annual gross domestic product is something like 25 billion dollars, experts say.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday his country was ready to discuss a write-off of Iraq's debts.
"We are ready for negotiations," Putin told a press conference after meeting with French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder, in the Russian city of St. Petersburg.
"In terms of redeeming debts of the poorest countries, Russia is number three in the world after France and Japan, and if you take the size of the gross domestic product, we're number one," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency April 12, 2003)
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