OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maputo | Tuesday 6.15pm.
SOUTHERN African leaders called on Tuesday for the international community to cancel Mozambique’s foreign debts to help it recover from devastating floods and cyclones.
A special summit meeting of the Southern African Development Community “appealed to the international community to cancel all foreign debts owed by Mozambique to enable it to channel all available resources to the reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure and property,” a final communique said.
The statement was released after the meeting in Maputo.
Mozambique pays more than $73-million a year to service its debts, according to the debt eradication pressure group Jubilee 2000.
Under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, creditors agreed last June to cancel two-thirds of Mozambique’s debt of some $5.6-billion.
Mozambique also owes an additional $2-billion in private debt.
At the summit were the presidents of Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia as well as the prime ministers of Lesotho and Swaziland.
As the leaders gathered, a UN team headed out from the capital Maputo on Tuesday in a helicopter search for villagers stranded in remote areas of the upper Limpopo River valley.
The mighty Limpopo, which runs into Mozambique along the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe, was responsible for some of the worst flooding in the country, leaving towns and villages under water and hundreds dead.
The government said a total of 492 people were now known to have died in the catastrophe nationwide, and aid workers expect the toll to reach the thousands. — AFP