BRUSSELS - The United States and Europe will urge Iraq's remaining creditors to match or better Western government pledges of debt relief at an international conference on Wednesday, EU and US officials said on Monday.
The conference, jointly hosted by the European Union and Washington, will tread carefully around lingering sensitivities over the US-led war, which split Europe in 2003, and is not aiming to produce initiatives to tackle the lethal insurgency in Iraq. Instead, ministers will focus on political and economic themes -- pressing Baghdad to give minority Sunni Arabs a fair say in drafting a constitution, and encouraging others to follow the Paris Club of creditor nations in slashing Iraqi debt.
"This is the opportunity for Iraq and members of the Paris Club to encourage others to be as generous, or more generous," an EU official told a briefing, referring to an accord last November to slash 80 percent of the Paris Club debt, worth $38.9 billion.
The Paris Club includes the Group of Seven industrialised countries -- the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, Britain, France and Italy -- as well as other western European states, Russia and Australia.
But Washington estimates Iraq owes as much as $70 billion, including commercial debt, outside the Paris Club and has been urging those creditors for months to make a contribution. "Obviously these are issues that have to be settled in bilateral negotiations," Richard Jones, Iraq advisor to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said in an interview. "But if we get indications from countries that they are well-disposed, that is a step forward," he told Reuters in Brussels, citing Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, China, India and eastern European states among those substantial creditors.
Washington went further than the 80 percent relief agreed by the Paris Club by waiving all of the $4 billion Iraq owed it. 
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