African leaders today urged the Group of Eight nations to tackle spiking oil and food prices, warning the crisis threatens to aggravate an already desperate plight in the continent.
The call came as leaders of the Group of Eight nations, including US President George W Bush, launched their key annual summit at a spa resort in northern Japan with a special session also attended by seven African leaders.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the African leaders - from Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania - demanded action as the global food and fuel crisis has hit the continent's most vulnerable people the hardest.
'The African countries expressed their fears that many of the Millennium Development Goals will be more difficult to reach if commodity prices keep rising like they are at the moment,' she said.
Food prices have nearly doubled in three years and set off riots in parts of the developing world, which are also being hit hard by record oil prices - a joint crisis that is the primary focus of G8 leaders in Japan.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the start of the summit, backed the African leaders and called on G8 nations to live up to their promises to double aid for Africa by 2010.
The UN's flagging Millennium Development Goals were launched in 2000 and involve an eight-point action plan to reduce poverty and improve healthcare and education in Africa by 2015.
But G8 nations are falling behind on the goals and skyrocketing food and oil prices have aggravated the problem. Aid groups accused some of the G8 nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US - of walking away from earlier commitments.
European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso offered some relief, proposing the creation of a €1 billion EU fund to fight hunger and help farmers in poor countries with seeds and fertiliser.
