Italian
rap star Lorenzo Jovanotti sent a message to Prime Minister Massimo
D’Alema to forgive all Third World debt as a sign of hope for
the new millennium.
Performing at the
country’s biggest music festival in the Italian Riviera resort
of San Remo, Jovanotti declared: “I would like to use the microphone
and the television, to ask you from here to make a huge sign…Cancel
the debt!” “One billion people on the planet live on less than
a dollar a day…Their poverty is not a choice but their only
reality,” he said on the opening night of the annual six-day
festival that has Italians glued to their television screens.
Bono of U2 (who recently
did a song with Wyclef) told the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero
he would only attend the festival’s finale on Saturday if Italian
Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema made a pledge on debt cuts.