This was a heck of a week for the World Bank to hold out the carrot that Burma one day could be eligible to have its $5.1 billion in debt erased.

Not only did September 27 mark the 17th anniversary of the founding of Burma’s National League for Democracy, the party led by Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi that won its country’s elections in 1990 only to be harassed, imprisoned and kept out of power. But a report endorsed by both Vaclav Havel and Bishop Desmond Tutu is recommending that the United Nations Security Council take up the matter of Burma immediately as a threat to world peace.

The report is damning. “Rape is a weapon the Burmese army wields to demoralize and weaken ethnic minorities,” it declares in a chapter on sexual violence. “Under direct threat of jail or bodily injury, hundreds of thousands of Burmese civilians are forced to work on infrastructure projects that involve the construction of roads, dams, railroads, and military barracks with little or no pay. Similarly, civilians, often young children, are forced to serve in the military as soldiers and porters,” it says in a chapter on forced labor. The report cites other studies estimating that there are 500,000 heroin addicts in a country that has become the leading heroin exporter in its region. And this says nothing of the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrest.

In short, the two democratic heroes are pointing out that in every possible definition, Burma is a failed state and a threat to both its people and its neighbors. The Washington director of Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, agrees. “Burma should not meet the criteria for debt relief because it would be ludicrous based on its past record to suggest it would spend the proceeds of that relief in ways that would help its people,” he said. “It’s a textbook example of why we need to tie aid and debt relief to reforms.”

This is why it’s folly to pretend that Burma is like any other of the destitute nations the World Bank dubs, “heavily indebted poor countries,” and that presumably Burma could be eligible at some point for the kind of debt relief afforded to, say, Zambia. To be fair, the World Bank included Burma in a list of some of the world’s most failed states in what its bureaucrats have called a “pre-decision point,” over the weekend.

When I asked a spokesman for the Bank, Damian Milverton, about the decision, he put it this way: “We published a list of countries that could qualify for debt relief in the future. Burma would still have to take several steps to be eligible for debt relief, including asking the Paris Club of creditors for a rescheduling of their debts.”

But what about the rape, the child soldiers and Aung San Su Kyi? Shouldn’t those factors play a role in whether or not the military junta in charge at Rangoon gets to divert its debt payments to build more military barracks? When asked about Burmese repression, Mr. Milverton was clear that these matters still did not factor into the bank’s decision making. “The bottom line is the bank does not use political judgments for any kinds of assistance that it provides, whether that’s grants, no interest loans or debt relief,” he said. “On the debt relief issue, it’s very clear what a country has to do to qualify for debt relief, that is they have to show they can manage their finances and use the proceeds of debt relief to help the poorest people in their country, because ultimately they are the people we are trying to help.”

One might expect this kind of answer from the regime at the bank prior to the arrival of Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense who is said to have written some of the president’s most stirring speeches on the necessity of the democratic world to come to the aid of those struggling against authoritarians. And it’s not clear that Mr. Wolfowitz, who has been the first president of the World Bank to meet with opposition parties on his trips abroad, would have phrased his answer to the Burma question quite this way. But this also speaks volumes about the disposition of the institution Mr. Wolfowitz now heads.

Under the current rules of the World Bank, it’s entirely possible that the war criminals in Burma’s ruling “State Peace and Development Council” – the new name for the gang that used to be ominously called “SLORC” – could get all the benefits of international development if they hired competent accountants. No one is arguing that the world should not endeavor to eliminate malnutrition, illiteracy, and all of the other maladies of poverty. But it’s also high time that the world’s industrialized nations recognize that a chief cause of the poverty they wish to eradicate are the regimes that receive their assistance.