Britain readies new measures as UN steers aid to poor nations

Britain said it would do more to help its ailing economy, as a UN aid conference opened in Doha to help developing nations weather the global financial storm.

British finance minister Alistair Darling said London will "almost certainly" do more in the coming months to help the British economy recover from a downturn.

In an interview with The Observer weekly newspaper published Sunday, Darling said that ministers would announce new plans next week to force Britain's banks, several of which were bailed out by the government in October, to treat their customers fairly.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Darling's remarks came after he unveiled on Monday a 20-billion-pound (24-billion-euro, 31-billion-dollar) economic stimulus plan in a bid to reignite consumer spending and fight back against looming recession.

International bodies on Saturday urged concerted action to help developing nations confront the global economic crisis, but the absence of major leaders at a UN aid conference dampened hopes of concrete initiatives.

"The financial crisis is not the only crisis we face. We also confront a development emergency and accelerating climate change," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said at the opening of a four-day conference on Financing for Development.

"These threats are inextricably linked. They must be dealt with as one," he told journalists in Qatar. "We need a truly global stimulus plan that meets the needs of emerging economies and developing countries."

Ban hosted a "retreat" for world leaders on Friday aimed at converting intentions expressed at a Group of 20 summit in Washington this month into "concrete recommendations" ahead of the next G-20 meeting in London in April.

However, he acknowledged that only 10 national leaders were among the 34 or 35 high-level delegates who turned up, and no conclusions were announced.

Ban said he still hopes the conference can come up with concrete plans as well as updating a 2002 Monterrey Consensus on aid to developing countries.

"Global crises call for global solutions," European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso told the conference.

"A global answer requires the presence of all regions in the world, representing the voice of the rich, the emerging and the poorest," he said, noting that 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty on less than 1.25 dollars a day.

Hilde Frafjord Johnson, deputy executive director of UNICEF, said no big decisions should be expected at Doha because unlike when the Monterrey Consensus was reached, the conclusions have not been agreed beforehand with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The meeting is still important in order to make progress in setting new goals and to deter donor and recipient countries from backsliding on existing commitments, Johnson told AFP.

Some developing countries have not received aid they were promised if they improved their national governance such as by dealing with corruption, she said.

"This hasn't happened. A number of countries have delivered but have not received the support they need."

In Germany, meanwhile, Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck defended Berlin's refusal to back a proposed multi-billion-euro economic stimulus plan, dismissing it as "ineffective populist measures".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week was cool to the idea pushed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to contribute to a proposed 200-billion-euro (254-billion-dollar) European stimulus plan drafted by Brussels.

"The Germans do not have to accept a European proposal where we do not understand what could be the economic impact," Steinbrueck told weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

Berlin has already shown a "strong response" to the global financial crisis, he added, having earlier this month committed around 31 billion euros over two years to support Europe's biggest economy, which official figures showed fell into recession in the third quarter.

In Reykjavik some 4,500 people braved the winter chill on Saturday to protest over Iceland's deep financial crisis and call for new elections to replace Prime Minister Geir Haarde's administration.

The country of just 320,000 people saw its once-booming financial sector collapse under the weight of the worldwide credit crunch, forcing the government to take control of three major banks in early October as the island's currency nose-dived.

Reykjavik recently secured a bailout of almost five billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund and the neighbouring Nordic countries.