Shanghai Daily | 上海日报 -- English Window to China News

BRITISH Prime Minister Gordon Brown has warned the Group of Eight nations against a retreat into isolationism, saying the looming threat to the global economy instead required a speeding up of the fight against climate change and poverty.

In an interview with the Guardian newspaper published yesterday ahead of a G8 summit in Japan, Brown stressed the need for united action in the West to reduce dependency on fossil fuels and boost food production in developing countries.

His comments came amid fears that the credit crunch would cause the G8 industrialized nations - the United States, Japan, Russia, France, Britain, Canada, Italy and Germany - to backpedal on pledges to cut carbon emissions and increase aid to poor countries by US$50 billion a year, the Guardian said.

"The world is suffering a triple challenge: of higher fuel prices, higher food prices and a credit crunch," Brown said.

"My message to the G8 will be that instead of sidelining climate change and the development agenda, the present economic crisis means that instead of relaxing our efforts we have got to accelerate them. This agenda is not just the key to the environment and reducing poverty, but the key to our economic future as well."

He said the summit would be judged on whether it rolled back protectionism, supported cleaner energy, and came up with ways to reduce oil and food prices.

He said he would consider it to be a success if the G8 showed unity, gave strong backing to a new global free-trade deal and pushed ahead on climate change and development.

Brown also said fighting poverty was in the best interests of the West.

"Unless we help poor countries to become more prosperous through education, health and economic development, we will be piling up the problems of global inequality," he said.

Meanwhile, more than a thousand people marched in northern Japan yesterday to protest the summit. Police briefly clashed with marchers, detaining four people, but no injuries were reported.

Protesters gathered at a park in central Sapporo to demand that the G8 nations take urgent measures to stop global warming, grant indigenous people greater rights, and combat world poverty and discrimination