By Alphonso Toweh MONROVIA, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has welcomed China's decision to forgive all the war-torn country's debt, and appealed for a donors' meeting later this month to follow suit. On a visit to the dilapidated seaside capital Monrovia on Thursday, Chinese President Hu Jintao signed a series of health and education projects and cancelled all the debt owed by Liberia to China up until 2005, worth an estimated $15 million. "We commend you for the decision to cancel all debt owed by Liberia up to 2005, and we call on all other backers to do likewise, thereby enabling us to strengthen the provision of needed social services to our people," Johnson-Sirleaf told a banquet in Hu's honour late on Thursday. "We will be making this call loud and clear at the partnership forum which will be held in Washington mid-February this year," she added. Liberia's on-off civil war from 1989 to 2003 devastated the once-prosperous West African country, wrecking infrastructure and driving a million people from their homes. More than 200,000 people were killed in the conflict, which saw drug-fuelled child soldiers killing, raping and maiming civilians. The Feb. 13-14 Liberia Partners Forum in Washington -- co-hosted by the World Bank, United Nations, U.S. government and European Union -- will discuss ways to curb poverty and rebuild the country, which relies on 15,000 U.N. troops to keep the peace. It will be followed by a one-day private sector conference. Liberia has a foreign debt of some $3.7 billion, mainly run up since the 1980s under the dictatorships of Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor. The country's ratio of debt to gross domestic product is among the highest in the world. Debt is equivalent to 30 times annual exports or eight times GDP. The government of Johnson-Sirleaf -- a former World Bank economist elected just over a year ago -- has implemented an IMF Staff Monitored Programme (SMP) and made good progress toward clinching multilateral debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Countries scheme (HIPC).
