The leaders of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico on Tuesday stressed the importance of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations in 2000.

In a declaration issued at the end of a group meeting held here, the leaders said the international community has recognized that achieving the internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, needs a new partnership between developed and developing countries.

"This was stated in the Monterrey Consensus, whereby the international community agreed to work in a coordinated manner to support development by mobilizing domestic resources, attracting international resource flows, developing innovative financial mechanisms, harnessing the benefits of international trade, increasing international financial and technical cooperation, achieving sustainable debt financing and external debt relief, and enhancing the coherence and consistency of the international monetary, financial and trading systems," the declaration said.

"As we reach with uneven success the mid-point in the process to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, particularly in the least developed countries in Africa and other regions, the international financial community should join efforts to preserve financial stability and resume the path of vigorous and sustainable economic growth as necessary conditions to attaining these goals," it said.

"We urge developed countries to renew their resolve to support these processes in the global interest, particularly regarding trade openness, the fulfillment of their commitments to allocate at least 0.7 percent of their GNP (gross national product) to official development assistance (ODA), and the reform to global governance," it added.

"The international community should ensure that, from their holistic perspective, the upcoming UN Millennium Development Goals High-level event and the Doha Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development contribute to achieving all-round and balanced progress towards the Millennium Development Goals at the global level," the declaration said.

"A follow-up mechanism to continue to monitor the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus should be one of the results of the Doha Conference," the declaration added.

The Monterrey Consensus is the landmark agreement adopted by world leaders in Mexico at the 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development. It calls for the resources to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the conditions that will enable freer trade, more foreign investment, debt relief and efficient government. The MDGs adopted in 2000 are a set of targets designed to halve or eradicate listed socio-economic ills by 2015.

Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Sapporo, capital of Japan's Hokkaido prefecture, on Monday for the Outreach Session of the Group of Eight (G8) Summit, slated for Wednesday in the northern Japanese resort of Toyako.

(Xinhua News Agency July 9, 2008)