The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Doha

High-level delegates including heads of state were gathering in Doha yesterday for a UN- sponsored conference seeking ways to limit the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission, are among around 50 leaders expected in Qatar.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is also reportedly headed to the Qatari capital despite his country battling a serious humanitarian crisis and a deadly outbreak of cholera.

Developed countries have so far committed to pay less than 20 billion dollars a year of the 50 billion dollars in additional aid which they agreed in 2004 to donate by 2010, UN figures show.

The new money leaves total annual development aid far short of the 130 billion dollars a year targeted for 2010 by the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

At a time when major powers like the United States, the European Union and China are ploughing hundreds of billions of dollars into their own economies, they are likely to find it harder then ever to come up with the promised extra help for poorer nations.

Friday's discussions aim to "act as a bridge from the G20 Washington meetingt by proposing concrete actions that limit the impact of the financial crisis on developing countries," a UN spokesman said.

Participants will also seek to "maximise the potential for responses to the crisis that also address climate change," he said.

The meeting comes the day before the official start of the Doha Conference on Financing for Development, a four-day UN event following on the 2002 conference in Monterrey which achieved a landmark North-South agreement on development principles.

Implementing those principles has been made more challenging by climate change and the global credit crunch, UN officials admit.

Friday's high-level get-together is billed as a "retreat" and it remained unclear exactly who would attend.

However, Barroso has scheduled a news conference for Friday afternoon, while Ban and Qatari emir Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani will speak to the media in the evening.

"Slower economic growth and continued uncertainty are threatening efforts to tackle the key concerns of the United Nations and its members: human security, poverty and hunger, and climate change," the UN spokesman said.

The credit crunch has increased the costs of providing the finance that developing nations require, whether it comes from domestic resources, trade and investment, remittances, foreign lending or development aid, he said.

Ban organised the Doha "retreat" after leaders at the G20 summit on November 15 agreed to work on a joint plan of action to restore the world economy.

The G20 leaders have agreed to meet again in London next April but Ban hopes an interim meeting can make progress on the UN's particular concerns.

Friday's "retreat" and the financing conference come in the wake of a call by the World Bank on Thursday for donors to boost aid to poor nations hit by a financial crisis that is "not of their making."

Developing countries "find themselves at the mercy of a crisis not of their making," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a statement.