-Caveat Lector-
Senators Oppose IMF Gold Plan
By HARRY DUNPHY
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - A plan by the International Monetary Fund to sell gold to
finance debt relief for poor countries would hurt many of these nations and
the U.S. gold industry, two senators said today.
Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and
Sen. Chuck Hagel, chairman of the subcommittee on international economic
policy, said they have joined a bipartisan group to oppose the gold sales,
which require congressional approval.
In a letter to Treasury Secretary-designate Larry Summers, the senators said,
``We are unalterably persuaded that selling IMF gold reserves would adversely
affect the very countries the administration intends to assist and further
damage the U.S. domestic gold industry.''
Opposition also came from lawmakers representing gold mining states. ``It
ain't going to happen,'' predicted Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev.
Helms, R-N.C., and Hagel, R-Neb., said that in the past month, since Britain
announced it was selling a portion of its gold reserves, the price of the
gold has plunged to a 20-year low of $258 an ounce.
They said they were concerned that the United States, the second largest
producer of gold after South Africa, would lose jobs and companies would go
bankrupt if the prices continue to fall.
Helms and Hagel said 36 of the 41 nations intended to benefit from the IMF
gold sales are gold producers and ``if sales further depress gold prices, it
is questionable that benefits from debt relief would outweigh the harm done
by falling prices.''
Leaders of the world's main industrial nations meeting last week in Cologne,
Germany, gave the go-ahead for the IMF to sell 10 million ounces of its $27
billion in gold reserves to help finance the IMF portion of debt relief for
poor countries.
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