The US will write off $391m in bilateral debt owed to it by Liberia immediately and work with the World Bank and the IMF to find a solution to the $1.2bn debt it owes the multilateral organisations, secretary of state Condoleezza Rice announced on Tuesday.

Her commitment, at the start of a donor’s conference in Washington, came as Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s reformist president, urged the international community to speed up disbursement of aid and reduce donor bureaucracy to help secure the country’s fragile peace.