Speaking at a luncheon meeting of the Canadian Club at Winnipeg (Manitoba), Chretien proposed "that other industrialised countries forgive 100 per cent of the debt owed to them" by these poorest of the poor countries.

He also suggested "that the cases of these extremely poor countries, that were initially deemed to be ineligible for consideration but have been hit by unexpected shocks such as natural disasters or world economic turmoil, be re-examined" by the G-7 countries.

Chretien made another startling proposal that "upto 10 million ounces of gold from IMF be sold in order to allow the IMF to participate in a broader initiative to assist heavily indebted poor countries." Canada has, during the last 20 years, written off $1.3 billion in foreign debt "owed to us bydeveloping countries," he said. Names of those countries or the actual debt load were not revealed in his speech. Chretien thus claimed that Canada was the leader among the G-7 countries for debt-forgiveness to developing nations. These proposals will be submitted to the G-7 countries and Chretien said he "will push for the G-7 to adopt (these proposals) as a group for all its members and which we will adopt for dealing with the remaining debt owed to us by developing nations.

"There is, however, a string attached to this generosity of Chretien. He suggested debt-forgiveness should be linked "to human development expenditures and discouraging of harmful or excessive military expenditures."

Chretien said the implication of the suggestion was that "we should forgive debt and grant further credits to countries that increase spending on education and healthcare for their people and reduce spending on weapons and the military."

However, governments that spend money on defence, buying of arms toviolate the human rights of their own people and "oppress them" and "destabilise their neighbours deserve no such break," Chretien said. This enormous increase in population would further increase poverty in poorer countries and thus augment disparity amongst rich and poor countries. Chretien predicted that therefore there would certainly be a "clash... between the world's rich, and its many more poor."

Chretien also dolled out some other interesting statistics in this context. He said,"Americans spend $8 billion each year on cosmetics. Europeans spend $11 billion on ice cream."

Against this kind of astronomical consumption, there were 2 billion people who lacked basic sanitation facilities, the provision of which would cost only $9 billion. There were another billion plus people who "could have access to basic education for only $6 billion," Chretien concluded.

According to demographic projections, the world's population will increase from the present 5.5 billion to 9 billion by 2050. It iswidely known that most of that increase will occur in third world countries.