UNITED NATIONS: The meeting was billed as a major gathering of political and economic leaders - mostly trade and foreign ministers - from the world's 50 poorest nations.

"Among unprecedented global prosperity", they concluded at the end of a weeklong high-level meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Friday, "the world's poorest nations are more vulnerable now than ever before."

The 50 nations categorized as least developed countries (LDCs), with a total population of over 700 million people, range from Afghanistan and Angola to Sierra Leone and Somalia. And 34 of the 50 are from sub-Saharan Africa.

The only bright spot was that two of the LDCs - the Maldives in South Asia and Cape Verde in Africa - have shown such remarkable economic resilience that they are both on the verge of 'graduating' from the ranks of LDCs to that of developing nations.

This is a break from the past where the number of LDCs has kept increasing over the last two decades - from about 26 in the 1980s to 50 last year - symbolising the worsening economic situation in the developing world. So far, the only LDC that has bucked the trend and graduated to the developing world is Botswana.

At least five other LDCs - Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Uganda and Samoa - have made 'strong' economic progress, according to the United Nations.

The rest, however, have been going mostly downhill, say LDC leaders who complain of rising debts, declining development aid, poor commodity prices and increased Western tariff barriers for third world products.

Mathieu Kerekou, the president of Benin, who heads the coordinating bureau of LDCs, told ECOSOC that the much-trumpeted goal of a 50 per cent reduction in the number of people living in poverty seems to be moving further and further away from the 2015 deadline.

"The results so far have not been encouraging," he told delegates, because official development assistance (ODA) has not increased, as pledged, and support for exports had negatively impacted LDCs in world markets.

Unless current annual ODA from Western nations is virtually doubled - from 55 billion dollars to over 100 billion dollars - the world's poorer nations will not be able to either reduce poverty, achieve universal primary education or reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by the 2015 deadline.

The severe poverty of the LDCs was not only the result, but also the cause, of economic stagnation, UN deputy secretary-general Louise Frechette told delegates.

"If the debts of Iraq could be forgiven", she asked, "why not those of the poorest nations?"

Currently, total LDC debt amounts to about 145 billion dollars compared with the 120 billion dollars owed by oil-rich but war- ravaged Iraq.

The United States has been making a determined effort to get Western and Arab nations to write off the Iraqi debt but no such attempt has been made to relieve the debt burden of LDCs.

Rubens Ricupero, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), told ECOSOC that the goal of poverty eradication was 'daunting'.

Given current trends, he said, the number of people living in extreme poverty in LDCs would jump to 471 million by 2015 - rising from 334 million in 2000. "Those statistics were chilling," Ambassador Murari Raj Sharma of Nepal, a UN envoy representing one of the few Asian LDCs, told ECOSOC.

For instance, said Ricupero, LDCs spend an average of about 4.60 dollars per capita annually on health compared with 1,456 dollars in the world's 22 rich industrial nations.

After subsistence consumption in the LDCs, he pointed out, only 15 cents per person per day was left for investment in capital formation, public investment and the running of vital services, including schools, law and order, and health.

"Thus, alternative source of resources must be found, including through improved ODA, increased immigrant remittances, foreign direct investment, and trade and debt relief," he added. "The conclusion is unequivocal: on the basis of domestic resources alone, LDCs cannot lift themselves out of poverty," he said.

Sharma said that Nepal - like other LDCs - was "trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and backwardness." There was a need, he warned, for urgent, bold and resolute measures, if LDCs want to win the war on poverty and hunger.

Marjatta Rasi of Finland, current ECOSOC president, told delegates that a significant increase in responsible investments in LDCs would create a positive impact on their economic development, job creation and the eradication of poverty. "There was a growing recognition that solutions could only be found if the private sector was involved," she added.

UN Under-Secretary-General for LDCs, Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, told IPS that LDCs had seen slow growth, and low income and domestic savings, which had in turn, limited increases in investment and economic growth.

"To combat the situation, LDCs must continue domestic efforts for reform and reorganisation by improving efficiency, transparency and accountability, and facilitate the emergence of governance structures and business-friendly environments," he added.

The international community, meanwhile, must fulfill its commitments to establish an enabling environment - not only through increased and better quality development assistance but also through increased investment, debt relief and free and fair trade, Chowdhury added.

Meanwhile, in a new report released here, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan says that special provisions should be made for those LDCs that are in conflict situations or are emerging from one.

The study says that 80 per cent of the world's 20 poorest countries have suffered a major civil war in the past 15 years. These countries include Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Somalia - all of them LDCs.-Dawn\ The InterPress News Service.