Brown urges 'greater co-operation'

The Prime Minister urged governments, faith groups, private companies and non-governmental organisations to work together towards the Millennium Development Goals.

The United Nations goals were set by global leaders in 2000 to tackle global poverty, disease and hunger.

A recent report by the UN said millions had been helped out of dire poverty and millions of children were now in schools. But it warned that targets for cutting hunger, maternal mortality and infant death rates had not been met.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Brown said: "I think all of us together must work far more closely in co-operation to achieve the goals."

Earlier, addressing the main auditorium at the Davos conference, Mr Brown called for the revamping of international institutions, saying those created decades ago were no longer up to dealing with today's challenges.

And he warned against overreacting to concerns about the world economy, such as resorting to "heavy-handed regulation," despite a "testing time for the global economy", while also rejecting the other side of the coin - "being gripped by or paralysed into inaction".

Calling for reforms to meet new world challenges, he went on: "The IMF and the World Bank and the United Nations...were built for problems in the 1950s."

Specifically, Mr Brown urged transforming the World Bank into "the World Bank for the environment as well as development", an institution that could underwrite funds for developing countries looking to turn from carbon-based fuels to alternative energies.

In calling for revamping the United Nations, Mr Brown said peacekeeping must be linked to stabilisation, reconstruction and development to avoid perpetuating failed-state status in developing countries riven by war or other crises.