(ENI) The head of the World Bank and senior figures from the world's major faiths, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, are to meet later this month for a dialogue that has already been described as a "huge potential breakthrough" in moves to alleviate global poverty.

The meeting will bring World Bank officials - including its president, James D. Wolfensohn - face to face with some of the most prominent critics of the World Bank's policies in the developing world.

The World Bank was set up in Washington immediately after World War II to help raise living standards in developing countries, using loans funded by the rich nations. Through its loans, the World Bank has enormous influence. In 1993, for example, its lending commitments exceeded US$2.5 million an hour. However, its efforts to encourage some developing countries to reform their inefficient economies before receiving massive World Bank loans have often proved controversial, provoking criticisms from many non-governmental organisations and churches.

The dialogue - named World Faiths and Development - will be co-chaired by James Wolfensohn and George Carey, and will take place on 18 and 19 February at Lambeth Palace, the archbishop's London headquarters.

Other Christian communities directly represented will be the Roman Catholic, Orthodox (from both the Ecumenical Patriarchate and from the Moscow Patriarchate) and Lutheran traditions. They will take part alongside Baha'is, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Taoists.

According to a statement jointly issued by the World Bank and Lambeth Palace, "the main aim of the dialogue is to broaden opportunities for common understanding and action in tackling the critical issue of global poverty. It is designed to help the bank and the faiths to reach a better understanding of each other's ideas about approaches to development and possible obstacles in the way of achieving desirable development aims."

Andrew Purkis, the Archbishop of Canterbury's senior adviser on world affairs, told ENI: "The meeting is a huge, potential breakthrough because the World Bank appears to be saying that it needs to engage in a serious way with non-material factors like the spiritual, cultural and environmental."

The issue of Third World debt was not on the agenda as such, Mr Purkis said, although "it may come up". The official agenda is split into three sessions: understandings of 'development'; criteria for development - participation, sustainability and voice; and planning for the future, including a statement from the co-chairmen (George Carey and James Wolfensohn).

(Churches have joined other organisations in a major campaign calling for the huge debts of many developing countries to be cancelled at the end of the millennium.)

A World Bank spokesman explained to ENI that Wolfensohn - an Australian-born naturalised American who became bank president in June 1995 - believed it was "vital to build a strong relationship with civil society, and that means it's important to work with religious groups".

The spokesman confirmed, however, that the World Bank's sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), would not be officially represented at the meeting. Both organisations have been widely criticised by aid agencies and others for what the critics see as unequal terms imposed on developing countries. Last month, addressing the diplomatic community in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Dr Carey singled out the two organisations in a strongly worded attack on Western aid practices. Third World debt raised "sharp moral questions", Dr Carey said. Mentioning the problems of Mozambique, he said Western demands for repayment were "condemning the country to a new form of slavery".

The archbishop, who is the spiritual leader of the world-wide Anglican Communion, said: "Such is the power of the international community, represented by the World Bank and the IMF, that [debtor governments] must comply with the conditions imposed. If they don't, growth and progress [are] impossible. If they do, the burden is transferred to the very poor, who are crushed by the extra demands, and at a stroke isolated from a world community which is getting steadily richer."

Also in Addis Ababa a week later, Wolfensohn replied equally strongly. He told a press conference: "I am not prepared to agree that any church has moral superiority over the bank ... I have 10 000 people who work with me who do not feel immoral. In fact they feel quite moral: we get up every morning to try to see how we can do the best job we can to alleviate poverty. We don't get up to see how we can put people in chains."

He said the World Bank's Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative was a practical response to the debt issue, which sought quickly and efficiently to relieve the debt of the highly indebted countries. African countries in that category owed US$120 billion (net present value) and Africa overall owed $230 billion. Wolfensohn put the total debt of developing countries at $2 trillion ($2 thousand billion).

As both hosts of the forthcoming meeting have spoken out so recently and so strongly, the stage seems set for a vigorous dialogue.