The Chinese premier said China will contribute 30 million US dollars to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to establish a trust fund to provide assistance to developing countries in order to enhance their agricultural productivity.

Thursday's high-level meeting also saw attendance of other political and philanthropic leaders from around the world who addressed the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs.

The main MDG goal is to halve poverty by 2015.

However, the crisis engulfing the world's financial markets has cast a dark cloud over the General Assembly. Leaders expressed concern that the international economic downturn will make it harder to meet key development goals.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made the following comment:

"The current financial crisis threatens the well-being of billions of people, none more so than the poorest of the poor. This only compounds the damage being caused by much higher prices for food and fuel. We must rise to all of these challenges immediately. We must inject new energy into the global partnership for development.

British prime minister Gordon Brown slashed the idea of postponing to realize millennium development goals.

"We say we are one world but every three seconds we allow one child to die from extreme poverty. Some say this time of financial turbulence is the time to put our ambitions on hold - to cut back or postpone the dream of achieving the millennium development goals. But this would be the worst time to turn back. Every global problem we have requires global solutions involving all the continents of the world."

Philanthropist Bill Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stressed that cooperation between philanthropists, the private business sector, governments and the United Nations is crucial to the success of the MDG project.

"So the opportunities for innovation are incredible and the Millennium Development Goals can guide the search for new discoveries by showing us where innovation can bring the biggest returns. This is their genius and I am optimistic about what they can help us accomplish."

The high-level event, held on the sidelines of the UN assembly' s annual debate, seeks to pinpoint gaps and seek ways to accelerate progress towards achieving the MDGs, a set of eight anti-poverty goals that world leaders agreed in 2000 to achieve by 2015.

A recent UN report found that soaring food and fuel prices and the global economic downturn are impeding advances in such targets as eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education and reducing child mortality, jeopardizing the likelihood of achieving some of the Goals.