President Lula, a guest at this week’s G8 summit in Italy, believes rich countries are doing too little to help develop countries cope with the effects of the global economic crisis.

'I am seeing little being done by the rich countries in the help they are supposed to give,' the Brazilian leader said this week. 'We need to demand the things we agreed the International Monetary Fund would do and that the World Bank would do.'

He said before the G8 summit that he looked forward to discussing food security with the other leaders, particularly given the recent declaration by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that the number of people going hungry in the world had passed the one billion mark for the first time.

He also said the G8 had been overtaken in importance by the more inclusive G20 grouping, whose next summit is in Pittsburgh in September.

'The big forum for economic questions should be the G20,' he said. 'The truth is that the situation is so complicated that today it is very difficult for the rich countries to take a position that does not take into account the so-called BRICs [the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China].'

Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim recently made similar comments, saying that the the absence of in the major emerging economies made the G8 unrepresentaitve. 'These economies [the G8] will continue to be important,' he said, 'but they can't subsitute for the indispensable presence of countries like China, Brazil and India, and Africa also has to be represented.'

Source: Embassy of Brazil in London