EVIAN, France (Reuters) - The world's eight richest nations, facing calls to spend more on developing country aid or risk missing agreed goals to fight poverty, pledged to speed up African debt relief, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday.
"The G8 heads of government recognized that there hasn't been sufficient progress on this question," Mbeki said after meeting the Group of Eight leaders at a working dinner with leaders on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) at a summit in the French spa of Evian.
"One of the decisions they took today was that they will attend to the question themselves," he told a news conference.
Earlier, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pressed the G8 for more progress on debt and dismantling trade barriers to meet an ambitious plan to cut poverty, agreed to in 2000.
"Formidable challenges lie ahead if we are to even come close to meeting the goals," Annan told the G8 leaders.
G8 summit host President Jacques Chirac is pushing for more progress on NEPAD, an African-inspired plan aimed at hauling the continent out of poverty. He has already unveiled proposals for a moratorium on farm export subsidies and suggested studying how to shield African farmers from fluctuating commodity prices.
But humanitarian group Oxfam said virtually nothing had been achieved in a year since leaders of the richest states pledged to fight African poverty.
"The U.S. and the UK found $70 billion to fight the war in Iraq. They can't find $25 billion to halve poverty in Africa and put every child in school," said Oxfam's Phil Twyford.
The proportion of people living in extreme poverty has risen in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, central and eastern Europe and former Soviet states, Annan said, adding that only East Asia and the Pacific were on track to meet their goals of easing the burden on the poor.
Annan wants an increase in aid to $100 billion a year, up from $57 billion last year, to meet the Millennium Development Goals agreed by 147 world leaders in 2000.
Brazil's President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva challenged the G8 to create a fund to fight global hunger. He said money could come from a tax on the international arms trade or reinvesting a percentage of developing countries' debt payments.
Britain is still seeking support for its plan to double poor country aid through an international finance facility.
Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the issue at a summit lunch and won support from Chirac, Mexico's President Vicente Fox and India's Atal Behari Vajpayee, Blair's spokesman told Reuters.
The G8 groups the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada, Italy and Russia.
(Additional reporting by Mike Peacock, Gary Regenstreif)
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