WORLD BANK BOSS WANTS G7 NATIONS TO CANCEL LIBERIA'S DEBT

LONDON (Reuters) - World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz urged the G7 industrial powers at a weekend meeting to help Liberia cancel its debt, Britain's Times said on Monday.
Wolfowitz called on G7 finance ministers, who met in Germany, to endorse plans to clear the country's arrears, the newspaper reported.
Under current rules the bank is only able to write off Liberia's debts when its arrears have been repaid, he said.
The World Bank boss told the Times he had received a "sympathetic reaction" and that Britain had agreed to the plans.
British finance minister "Gordon Brown has been strongly supportive. He joined me in working to impress on others the importance of moving," Wolfowitz said.
The World Bank, United Nations, U.S. government and European Union are due to co-host an international donors' meeting for Liberia on Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington.
The country's on-off civil war from 1989 to 2003 devastated the once-prosperous West African state, wrecking infrastructure and leaving more than 200,000 people dead.
Liberia has a foreign debt of some $3.7 billion, mainly run up since the 1980s under the dictatorships of Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor. The country's ratio of debt to gross domestic product is among the highest in the world. Debt is equivalent to 30 times annual exports or eight times GDP