Congo gets about 7’400’000’000 USD erased from their foreign debt, where 22 million dollars of them are from Norway, probably more from the UK. This is probably something that has been negotiated for a while, and apparently it’s partly old dept from former regimes.
It can’t be too much to ask that when Norway is negotiating for a transfer of French and Moland that this can be favorable for the negotiations. The country getting a lot of its foreign dept erased will probably lead to them trying to get more loans from other countries. That’s probably not so easy in these times of financial crisis, where countries like Greece, Ireland, and Spain not to forget Iceland are all in deep economical crisis, and in need of enormous loans. One of the few countries that it’s possible to get any money from is maybe Norway. That probably presupposes a good relationship between the countries. That is of course not achieved by letting Norwegians die in prison.
There is no doubt that if they don’t get out of prison within a reasonable timeframe they will die there. The conditions are very tough, and they can get sick at any time. Medical aid is uncertain to say the least. The conditions in the prison are steadily worsening with new and partly violent prisoners. At any time they can be attacked, abused and maybe killed. They are very affected mentally from a prison stay that would’ve killed most of us. So this is urgent!
Knut Moland November 19th 2010
