"Everyone who holds a pledge shall remit the pledge of anyone indebted to him." Thus reads the simple passage from Deuteronomy that inspired Jubilee 2000, the movement to provide debt relief to the world's poorest countries. But now, with the effort's millennial deadline approaching, debt forgiveness is proving far more complicated than the Biblical mandate suggests.

One does not need the Bible to know that debt relief is, in the words of author Salman Rushdie, "the Christian thing to do." Debt relief proponents point to a 1997 U.N. development program study that found if the cash spent by third world governments on debt interest payments were reallocated to health and education, the lives of 7 million children could be saved every year. As it stands now, the amount spent on debt service by these countries far outstrips such social spending--a wrong by any moral accounting.

Justly, the G-8 member nations gave debt relief top billing at their June 1999 summit

Children carry the yen symbol in a July march calling for debt relief. The demonstration, organized by Jubilee 2000, was held in conjunction with the G-8 meeting in Okinawa. TOSHIYUKI AIZAWA/REUTERS

in Cologne, pledging $100 billion to 25 different countries in Africa and Latin America by the end of the year. And the effort took on renewed urgency last spring as the global media woke up to the grave progress of AIDS on the African continent. The year's deadline held not only a millennial significance, but one that addressed the urgency of the humanitarian crisis.

Nearly half of the poor countries' debt is owed to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, where the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) Initiative had already been on track for several years before the Jubilee 2000 movement was born. In the spirit of millennial debt forgiveness, HIPC was enhanced to include more countries and expedite their enrollment in the debt relief program.

To date, debt relief has made some progress. Officials estimate that by October, 10 countries will have satisfied the requirements to be enrolled in the HIPC initiative, and thus far $30 billion in relief has been promised. But this falls well short of the initial goals set forth by world leaders and the IMF this year. "The problem right now is that after more than four years HIPC is stuck in the sand," says Ian Bray, a spokesman for Oxfam International, a nonprofit assistance and advocacy group for the poor. "And this is due to the Byzantine bureaucracy imposed by the IMF and G-8."

The creditors require that each country develop a clear poverty reduction strategy before it receives any relief, which seems sensible enough. But while Oxfam supports that policy, they claim that the technicalities are proving difficult for debtor countries to handle quickly, thus postponing the much- needed debt forgiveness.

Even more controversial are the "structural" requirements demanded of the HIPC countries, which must also conform to some of the same economic austerity measures required by the IMF in their loan programs--measures that have been widely criticized as harsh and sometimes counterproductive to economic growth.

Debt relief to Guyana, for instance, was withheld when the country failed to meet IMF-mandated budget targets. "There is simply no political will for real debt relief," says Adrian Lovett, Jubilee 2000's deputy director, "because it would remove the leverage created by the possibility of relief, leverage to get these countries to follow certain policies."

And while the Cologne summit marked a hopeful rallying point for debt forgiveness, Jubilee 2000 called last July's G-8 meeting in Okinawa "a squandered summit." Not only was no further progress made toward the idealistic targets set in the previous year, but leaders actually scaled down the number of countries within those targets from 25 to 20. As fuming debt relief proponents pointed out, the meeting itself cost a whopping $750 million.

While Japan generously laid out nori rolls and caviar for its powerful guests in Okinawa, it is less lavish with debt forgiveness. The Japanese government has fought such relief to countries where it has a high level of loan exposure, and even threatened to yank aid programs if their borrowers proceeded with the HIPC program. As a result of this pressure, both Ghana and Laos have announced they will drop out.

Funding debt relief is another problem altogether. The World Bank insists that it cannot spend money from its own accounts to fund the effort and still maintain its AAA credit rating, which it requires to borrow money at the lowest possible rates. That means additional money must come from its member countries, particularly the United States. But congressional Republicans, among the IMF and World Bank's harshest critics, have responded less than enthusiastically. A bill clawed its way through the House in July, emerging with only about half the funds requested by the Bank, and now faces further challenges in the Senate. As a result of funding delays, Bolivia and Honduras did not receive the early relief for which they had qualified.

The struggle for debt relief now moves to the IMF/World Bank annual meeting in Prague, which one advocate calls the effort's "last chance" for relief in 2000. IMF officials say talks will continue, though no particular action is expected. No official action, at least. In July, after the disappointment in Okinawa, Jubilee 2000 UK director Ann Pettifor vowed, "We will march to Prague to intensify pressure on the IMF to release these poor countries from the slavery of debt in this millennium year."

One World Bank official, speaking anonymously, is not surprised. "Of course they are going to throw everything they've got at this now," the official says, "because there's not much time left."