FOREIGN DESK Deal to Ease Poor Nations' Debt Eludes Rich Nations

The main disagreement is between the United States and Europe over an American approach that would reduce money available for very low-interest lending to poor countries.

The push for debt relief is part of a broader effort to aid the world's poorest countries, among them Ghana, Malawi and Zambia, which lack funds to provide the most basic health and education services for their people.

The United States favors canceling the debts that poor countries owe to the World Bank and the African Development Bank, which finance antipoverty programs on concessional terms, but has made no commitment to make up the money the two banks would lose in loan repayments. The Europeans want the rich countries to make such a commitment.

The departing World Bank president, James D. Wolfensohn, who opposes the American approach, said in an interview that about 20 percent of the money his group lends to poor countries is from loan repayments, and that the percentage is rising. If that money is not replaced when debts are canceled, the bank will have less money to lend, he said.

He credited the United States with increasing aid to poor countries generally, but on this issue, he said, ''As managers, you have to expect us to fight tooth and nail.''

Britain, which is leading an effort to double foreign aid to Africa, has already begun paying off 10 percent of the debt of 22 poor countries and has committed to continue doing so for at least a decade.

In addition to the $40 billion owed to the World Bank and the African Development Bank, the poor nations owe the International Monetary Fund $9 billion.

An International Monetary Fund report from March lays out how the fund could sell off some of its $45 billion in gold to finance debt relief.

The British support the sale of the gold. The United States is opposed. At a news conference on Saturday, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said the United States was focused on the World Bank and the African Development Fund because they hold most of the poor nations' debt.

In their public statements at the end of the talks on Saturday, American and British officials were optimistic about reaching a deal in July, when the heads of the Group of 8 -- Russia and the major industrialized nations, the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan -- meet in Scotland.

''I'm pleased our friends from the U.K. support 100 percent debt cancellation,'' Mr. Snow said; he repeated the American position favoring grants to loans for poor countries.

A spokesman for the British Treasury said, '' We've kept up momentum ahead of the G-8 summit.''

Before the start of the Scotland meeting, Mr. Wolfensohn will have been succeeded by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of state.

Mr. Wolfowitz has not taken a position publicly on replacing canceled loan repayments.

''That will be one of the first real tests of Wolfowitz,'' said Joseph E. Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank who headed the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration. ''Do his loyalties lie with Bush or the World Bank?''