A top economic adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told African countries yesterday to refuse to pay their huge debts if rich countries did not cancel them. American economist Jeffrey Sachs made the comment to a conference on hunger on the eve of a summit of the heads of state of the African Union, which estimates sub-Saharan Africa has foreign debts of $US201 billion ($283 billion). "The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable," said Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to Annan on global anti-poverty targets. "If they won't...
