World's poor shouldn't pay for balanced budgets-UN

UNITED NATIONS, June 28 (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday warned the world's biggest economies against making the poorest people on the planet bear the brunt of plans to slash public debt and government deficits.

Leaders of the Group of 20 club of big developed and developing economies agreed over the weekend in Canada to take different paths for cutting budget deficits and making their banking systems safer, a reflection of the uneven and fragile economic recovery in many countries.[ID:nN26228300]

"We are all concerned about about rising deficits and public debt," Ban told reporters in New York. "But we cannot balance budgets on the backs of the world's poorest people. We cannot abandon our commitment to the most vulnerable."

Global anti-poverty groups have joined Ban recently in criticizing the G20 and the Group of Eight rich nations club of not delivering on promises of aid for poor developing nations.

"We must keep a strong focus on the longer term," he said.

The United Nations supports the G20 declaration over the weekend that "narrowing the development gap and reducing poverty are integral to our broader objective of achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth," Ban said.

Ban, who attended the summit, said he was advocating three types of investment that he said would yield "high and immediate returns" -- investment in jobs, "green" environmentally friendly technology, and health and health care systems, especially for women and children.

Last week a U.N. report said efforts to cut hunger worldwide have been undermined by the global economic crisis, though the world remains on track to meet a goal of reducing poverty by 2015. [ID:nN23223467]

That report said it was vital for key aid donors to the developing world to meet their "unmet commitments" if the goal of halving poverty and other U.N. targets, known as the Millennium Development Goals, are to be achieved. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Alan Elsner)