There are few issues which could present Bono, the singer with the rock band U2, with an invitation to address a seminar at the World Bank's annual meetings.

But the heavily-indebted poor countries' (HIPC) debt relief process has brought the full armoury of modern campaigning - celebrities, telegenic public relations stunts and attempts to put domestic pressure on politicians - to a technical and complex issue.

At the moment, the campaigning machine is turning on the politicians who, campaigners say, have failed to keep their promises on the pace of debt relief and what it will achieve. HIPC II, the latest incarnation of the process, is behind schedule and is causing some countries to wonder whether the whole process is worthwhile.

The target of 24 (out of the 41 eligible) countries originally expected to qualify for relief by the end of the year has been whittled down to 20, and Jubilee 2000, the charity that has led the campaign, estimates that only 15 are likely to make it.

Meanwhile, faith in the ability of debt relief as a magic bullet, which will eliminate the main stumbling blocks to economic growth in the poorest countries, is diminishing as attention refocuses on the interdependent roles of trade and aid in development.

The summer has proved frustrating to campaigners seeking to hurry along the debt relief process.

The G8 summit at Okinawa in Japan was roundly condemned by Jubilee 2000 and other campaigners for failing to produce plans for deeper or faster relief. The one new initiative launched, a call from the UK for war- torn countries to be rewarded for ending conflict with debt relief, seemed to many sceptical observers to be little more than a restatement of the existing policy.

Jubilee 2000 is planning to wind itself up at the end of the year, and, as the date of its dissolution approaches, the remaining incentive to treading a cautious path diminishes still further. It has called for a fundamental reappraisal of the amount of debt relief on offer, and, as an immediate step, wants the Group of Seven (G7) rich countries to stop collecting payments on its own outstanding debt with the HIPCs immediately.

But, the prospects of a radical ratcheting up of the scheme along the lines of the Cologne initiative last year, which launched the latest version of the process, do not look as promising now as they did then. Although the intellectual argument in favour of debt relief has largely been won - few countries argue any more that relief will by itself create large moral hazard problems - the process is now in the hands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Those institutions, especially the IMF, have been reluctant to compromise the integrity of their part of the process - the production of poverty reduction strategy papers which set out development policies for recipient countries - for the sake of speed. In any case, while the majority of campaigners want to see a rapid succession of countries gaining relief, one or two leading shareholders, notably the US, are under domestic pressure to ensure that the details of the process are right.

Campaigners are also focusing on what happens after countries have passed through the debt relief process. A recent conference in London held by the UK Commonwealth group of countries concluded: "Participants noted that debt relief will not by itself be sufficient to eradicate poverty. The HIPC initiative should be associated with more overseas development assistance, which should be front-loaded."

The US General Accounting Office (GAO), a non-partisan research office which reports to Congress, has also cast doubt on the ability of debt relief as a process on its own. "Given the continued fragility of these countries, the initiative is not likely to provide recipients with a lasting exit from their debt problems, unless they achieve strong, sustained economic growth," it said in a report released over the summer.

Any shortfall in economic growth from the rates assumed by the IMF and the World Bank, which the GAO calls "optimistic", could lead to the re-emergence of unsustainable debt problems, the GAO says.

This renewed focus on growth and trade as the means of providing the HIPC countries with a lasting exit from poverty has meant engagement with the tangled world of trade negotiations. The joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee discussed access to northern markets for the least-developed and HIPC countries at the spring meetings, but although providing a forum for discussion, it had no formal power to make any agreement.

The difficulty faced by the debt relief process is that, on its own, it has a clear and achievable target with widespread popular support. But translating that into permanent development gains for the countries involved will prove to be a more enduring problem.