by Paul Ames

    BRUSSELS, April 1 (Xinhua) -- A former shoe-shine boy and assembly line worker, Brazil's president is not known for mincing his words. So before going to the G20 summit, he made clear where the blame for the world's dire economic predicament lies.

    "We can't permit that it's the poor ... that are the first to pay for a crisis created by the rich," Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in Brasilia last week. "This crisis was caused by the irrational behavior of white people with blue eyes, who before the crisis appeared to know everything, but are now showing that they knew nothing."

    Lula's words at a meeting last week with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the G20 host, reflect deep discontent in developing nations that the crisis made in Wall Street is now causing them disproportionate hardship.

    On Tuesday, the World Bank revised its forecast for 2009 growth in developing countries down to 2.1 percent.

    As late as November, the bank was predicting Third World grow that more than double that rate, but the speed with which the crisis has spread from the trading rooms of New York to bringing layoffs in the sugar plantations, textile factories and copper mines of Africa, Asia and Latin America has caught economists by surprise.

    "We have already begun to feel the heat, much against what African governments say because their banking systems are conservative, therefore Africa is not as exposed to this challenge as European countries and the U.S. are," Jan Sithole, general secretary of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions, said.

    "The truth is, because our markets are in those countries and there is currently apathy in the banks loaning out money ... that has caused lesser demand for the goods that we produce and therefore a call for downsizing and retrenchments of workers in most of our industries," Sithole said.

    Developing countries have been hit by falling demand for their exports, sharp declines in the prices of agricultural and mining commodities, a flight of investment, restrictions on credit and cuts in remittances sent home by emigrants.

    The London summit is facing mounting calls to help. U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon wrote to the G20 leaders, urging the creation of a 1 trillion-dollar stimulus plan for developing countries for 2009-2010.

    "We need a truly global stimulus package that meets the needs of developing countries," Ban said.

    In helping the poor countries, Ban argued, the G20 will also be helping themselves in the recession." In providing this support, you will bolster the global economy, help to underpin your own growth and secure global stability," he said.

    Separately, the World Bank has called on developed nations to dedicate 0.7 percent of their economic stimulus packages -- currently totaling around 2 trillion U.S. dollars -- to help developing countries. Lula is going into the summit calling for a 100 billion-dollar pool of trade credits to help boost the flow of world trade, an issue seen as essential to helping developing nations.

    Help for developing countries is the third item on the G20 agenda after talk on how to free up funds to stimulate a growth revival and a discussion on tightening banking regulations. Leaders of the developed nations have acknowledged that something needs to be done to help.

    "Developing countries must not pay the price for a crisis that was created in the developed world," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Tuesday.

    "We will not be forgetting that we have obligations to the poorest nations," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday at a news conference with U.S. President Barrack Obama.

    However, an early draft of the summit communique leaves the extent to which they will help open.

    As well as money, developing and emerging powers are seeking a greater say in the running of the world economy. The fact that theG20 has replaced the G8 as the main forum for discussing the crisis already illustrates a shift in the economic and diplomatic landscape with the emergence of India, Brazil and China as major players.

    Other G20 nations are looking to China to make a major contribution to plans to boost the reserves of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by hundreds of billions of dollars, so the IMF can intervene when needed to prop up nations in deep trouble.

    In return, there is an increasing realization that the current voting system at the IMF has to be revised to better reflect the current geo-economic balance. Currently, EU member states have 32 percent of the voting rights and the United States 17 percent compared to just 3.7 percent for China and India's 1.9 percent.

    "China's voting rights currently within the IMF are about the equivalent of Belgium and the Netherlands combined," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told the Wall Street Journal this week. "That has to change."

    The G24 group of developing nations last week called for a re-weighting of IMF voting rights by April 2010 and demanded greater representation on other international financial bodies like the Financial Stability Forum and Basel Committee which coordinate financial supervision.

    Barroso has indicated European nations would be willing to compromise.

    "The representation in international institutions like the IMF must reflect reality not history," he told reporters in Brussels. "Emerging economies must have an equitable stake. European member states will have to be flexible on how this is achieved."