United Nations: Ahead of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) meeting, the US and leaders from over 50 countries disagreed on the strategy to fight poverty and increase funding for development, while Secretary General Kofi Annan called for fair globalisation to achieve the millennium goals.

Noting that too many people, particularly in developing countries, feel excluded and threatened by globalisation, Annan asked leaders to summon the political will to better manage the economic and social effects of globalisation.

Participating in a debate that focused on the impact of globalisation and poverty alleviation on the eve of the UNGA session, he said, "In the Millennium Declaration, world leaders pledged to work to make globalisation a positive force for all the world's peoples."

Addressing the debate, leaders led by French President Jacques Chirac and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva voiced concerns about the rising gap between rich and the poor.

Highlighting the need to expedite the fight against poverty, they called for imposition of global tax on financial transactions and on sale of heavy arms besides creation of an international borrowing facility to raise money.

Despite the wide support, the suggestions were discarded by the US Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman who represented America at the meetings, which were skipped by President George W Bush.

Rejecting the idea of a global tax as proposed by the UN report, Veneman said, "Global taxes are inherently undemocratic" and "implementation is impossible."

Chirac and Silva also asked Governments across the world to implement proposals made in a UN report and called for steps to raise $ 50 billion a year to fight hunger.

The French President said in India, China, Brazil and many other countries, millions of people are living in extreme poverty and disgraceful working conditions.

Globalisation found strong support among the leaders but almost everyone said it is not being implemented properly and its full potential is not being harnessed.

"In India, China, Brazil and in many other countries, globalisation had improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people with the liberalisation of production and trade and the opening up of investment," Chirac said.

But millions of men, women and children are still living in extreme poverty and disgraceful working conditions. "We should ensure that the world's unprecedented wealth becomes a vehicle for the integration, rather than exclusion of the most underprivileged," he said.

"How can globalisation be justified to workers whose jobs have been relocated," Chirac, who specially travelled to New York for the two back-to-back conferences, asked. He left immediately after the conferences.

Silva said, "How many more times will it be necessary to repeat that the most destructive weapon of mass destruction in the world is poverty."

"Fair globalisation must begin with the right of everyone to a job," he said, adding it should be socially fair and politically sustainable.