{"id":1370,"date":"2006-02-08T21:55:20","date_gmt":"2006-02-09T03:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2006-02-08T21:55:51","modified_gmt":"2006-02-09T03:55:51","slug":"us-russia-germany-cancel-afghanistan-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/?p=1370","title":{"rendered":"U.S., Russia, Germany Cancel Afghanistan Debt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.signonsandiego.com\/news\/world\/20060208-1137-afghan-debt.html\">Smart move<\/a> all around.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Afghanistan on Wednesday hailed decisions to cancel the impoverished country&#8217;s debts to the United States, Russia and Germany, but the country likely will remain dependent on foreign aid as it recovers from decades of war.<\/p>\n<p>Afghanistan owed $108 million to the United States and $44 million to Germany from loans before the 1979 Soviet invasion. Russia claimed it was owed about $10 billion from loans to a puppet communist government in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;After 30 years of devastation, we are starting from nothing and any move such as this helps the reconstruction of Afghanistan,&#8221; said Khaleeq Ahmed, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.<\/p>\n<p>The Bush administration said Tuesday it will forgive the entire debt, following a similar pledge from Russia on Monday and from Germany at a donors&#8217; conference last week.<\/p>\n<p>Even with the loans forgiven, Afghanistan looks set to remain reliant on years of foreign aid. More than 90 percent of the government&#8217;s $4.75 billion budget in 2005 was financed by international donors, and Karzai has said his government will need propping up for about a decade.<\/p>\n<p>The International Monetary Fund&#8217;s representative in Afghanistan, Joshua Charap, said that even by 2010, Afghan government revenues are expected to cover less than two-thirds of total expenditures.<\/p>\n<p>Charap said the removal of the foreign debt would allow Kabul to &#8220;normalize its credit rating,&#8221; paving the way for new loans.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly a third of government spending this fiscal year has been on its new army and police amid rising crime and the Taliban-led insurgency. The hard-line Islamic militia was ousted from power in 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This poor nation, ravaged and rent by strife since the days of disco, needs all the assistance possible in succeeding, and the three countries forgiving debt are all safer with a peaceful Afghanistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smart move all around. Afghanistan on Wednesday hailed decisions to cancel the impoverished country&#8217;s debts to the United States, Russia and Germany, but the country likely will remain dependent on foreign aid as it recovers from decades of war. Afghanistan owed $108 million to the United States and $44 million to Germany from loans before [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,7,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-central-asia","category-europe","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}