OKINAWA, Japan (CWNews.com)

    The leaders of the world's seven leading industrialized nations gathering in Japan on Friday renewed their pledge to offer debt relief to the world's poorest countries.

    The Group of Seven leaders made their initial pledge last year to provide up to $100 billion in relief to the world's 40 poorest countries. The move had come as a response to Pope John Paul II's call in the year's leading up the Jubilee Year 2000 to provide a new start for developing nations weighed down with debt. In recent months, critics said the G7 was dragging its feet on living up to the promise made.

    "This summit offered the chance to go further and write off all the unpayable debts of the poorest countries-- a genuine new start," said Ann Pettifor, director of Jubilee 2000 UK, a lobbying group dedicated to debt relief. "The world leaders have blown it," she said.

    Among the problems delaying the plan are requirements that the debt-ridden countries sign on to onerous reforms required by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Only nine countries have signed up and the target of having 24 countries signed up by the end of the year has slipped to 20.

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