One of Bill Clinton's final acts as president was to secure Congress's approval for a $435-million component within the foreign-aid bill last October. This provision fulfills the pledge the United States originally made in 1996 at the Group of Seven (G-7) summit, where the world's seven richest governments agreed to finance a debt-relief plan for 41 of the poorest third-world nations.

The plan--formally called the Debt-Relief Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and commonly referred to as the HIPC initiative--was announced by the G-7 countries with much self-congratulatory fanfare. Yet, fraught with serious shortcomings and all-too-familiar strings attached, it is under fire by some of the biggest advocates of third-world debt relief.