Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the former Nigerian Finance Minister who is now a senior official at the World Bank, has added her voice to a growing campaign for the world's poorest countries to be represented in forthcoming talks to rewrite the rules of the global financial system.
George Bush is
gathering leaders from the G20, which includes powerful emerging countries such as China and India, as well as rich governments, for a set-piece summit in Washington next month to discuss how to reform the world's markets to absorb the lessons of the credit crunch.
Okonjo-Iweala, when asked whether the world's poorest countries should attend the summit, said: "This is a perfect opportunity to get them round the table. It would be good if they are heard, because they are also going to be impacted: they are going to be the ones suffering the most, because they are the most vulnerable."
More than 600 civil society groups from over 100 countries have signed a petition calling for a wider range of countries to be involved, under the auspices of the UN.
Nick Dearden, director of the UK's Jubilee debt campaign which has signed the petition, said: "Our worry at the moment is that this will simply be a resuscitation of the existing system."
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