Gordon Brown has challenged business leaders to play their part with politicians and aid agencies to prevent the dismal failure of international anti-poverty efforts.

The Prime Minister invited executives at Davos to a Downing Street summit in May at which companies will be asked to come up with resources and ideas to help to meet the Millennium Development Goals, eight key targets set in 2000 with a 2015 deadline.

Mr Brown’s appeal was shared by Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary- General, Bill Gates, of Microsoft, and Bono, the rock musician.

Mr Brown said: “We have promised that infant mortality will be cut by three quarters by 2015. On present trends we will not make that happen until at least 2050.

“We have promised that every child will be in schooling by 2015, but on present trends we will not achieve that before 2115 and the children of the world cannot wait another century.”

The Downing Street summit will be followed up by EU leaders at their meeting in June and at the G8 meeting of leading industrialised powers in Japan the following month.

Mr Brown added: “This is a unique call to action, never made before, to all private sector companies, all NGOs [non-governmental organisations] as well as all governments.”

Bono said that the world was facing a moment of truth. “Where another generation put a man on the moon, we cannot put every kid in school,” he said. “Where another generation fought fascism and prevailed, we fail in our fight against the anopheles mosquito, which kills 3,000 people a day.”

Mr Ban said that knowing that thousands of children were dying from preventable diseases, without doing anything about it, was like “doing nothing as the train roars off to Auschwitz”.

He added: “We need fresh ideas and fresh approaches. It is unacceptable that one child dies of hunger every five seconds.”

Mr Ban said that he would use September’s annual UN summit to refocus attention on the millennium goals.

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