WASHINGTON: Finance chiefs from the Group of Seven industrial powers struggled ahead of a meeting Friday to come up with a plan to ease the crushing debt burden on the world's poorest nations, amid growing calls for a 100 percent writeoff.

US Treasury Secretary John Snow, speaking to the reporters ahead of a meeting of G-7 finance ministers and policymakers of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, said more debt relief is needed, although he did not specifically endorse a British proposal to erase all debts from the poorest countries.