From the Asso­ci­ated French Press

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Haiti-Debt-_7494136

CANCUN, Mex­ico (AFP) — The United States wants the Inter-American Devel­op­ment Bank (IDB) to can­cel all of Haiti’s debt, stand­ing at some $447 mil­lion, US Trea­sury sources said on Thursday.

The United States also sup­ports a “robust” increase in the bank’s cap­i­tal, the main issue on the agenda of its annual meet­ing in Can­cun, Mex­ico, which was sched­uled to start yes­ter­day, one of the sources said, with­out giv­ing a figure.

“What we have to work out is the man­ner in which Haiti’s debt to this insti­tu­tion (IDB) is can­celled,” another source said in a tele­phone con­fer­ence with jour­nal­ists, giv­ing the fig­ure as $447 million.

The US Sen­ate last week unan­i­mously approved a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for eas­ing Haiti’s debt bur­den to help with recon­struc­tion efforts in the wake of the dev­as­tat­ing Jan­u­ary 12 earthquake.

The IDB esti­mates that Haiti’s recon­struc­tion could cost up to $14 billion.