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The ninth in this series of articles in which Hester Ross follows the progress of the Queen's Jubilee Baton through the Commonwealth and focuses on debt related issues encountered along the way. On 11th May the baton arrives in oil rich Brunei.

In Brunei's new multi-million dollar Jerudong Park playland, the spectacular rides are all free. Not that the residents need handouts. People here already enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. And, wait for it, in oil rich Brunei nobody even has to worry about their tax bills. Nobody pays taxes.

Light years away, you might think, from the social and economic horrors brought about by unpayable Third World debt. But Brunei's riches come almost entirely from oil, and the word "oil" is writ large in every first paragraph detailing the history of the debt crisis.

The story is well documented, and its retelling in the context of the present Middle East crisis brings an eerie sense of déjà vu. The tale starts in the US where overspending in the 1960s led to too many dollars being printed. The reduced buying power of the dollar did not please the oil producing nations who responded by hiking the price of oil. These extra billions were then deposited in western banks, interests rates consequently fell and the banks desperately and indiscriminately lent money to Third World countries who needed money for development and to pay for the now more expensive oil.

By 1973 commodity prices fell (helpful western advisors had encouraged too many Third World countries to develop their economies by overproducing the same crops) and this situation unfortunately coincided with the Yom Kippur war. Opec was forced to use the only weapon the Arab world had against the might of US and Israel: an oil embargo which led to a quadrupling of the price of oil. As always, Third World countries were the real losers as they were sucked deeper into the quagmire of unpayable debt. In the next seven years commercial lending to the Third World rose by 550%, much of this to fund oil imports.

The rest is history, and a history that now threatens to repeat itself. Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia recently found it necessary to warn the Bush administration that Arab states might again have to resort to using oil as a weapon if unmoderated support for Israeli military aggression in Palestine continues.

The consequences for the poor of theThird World of a repetition of 1973 hardly bears thinking about. The casualties of Israel and Palestine will find haunting grounds in the villages of Africa.

Visit www.jubileescotland.org.uk for more on Scotland's debt campaign or e-mail mail@jubileescotland.org.uk ) Voice your concerns for a fair resolution of the conflict in Israel Palestine by writing to Tony Blair and Jack Straw.
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