LONDON (AFP) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged leading world powers to pick up the pace on aid and tackling climate change despite economic woes in an interview Saturday ahead of next week's G8 summit.

Brown, attending the event in Japan for the first time as premier, said such action was "not just the key to the environment and reducing poverty but the key to our economic future as well," the Guardian newspaper reported.

"The world is suffering a triple challenge: of higher fuel prices, higher food prices and a credit crunch," Brown said.

"My message to the G8 will be that instead of sidelining climate change and the development agenda, the present economic crisis means that instead of relaxing our efforts, we have got to accelerate them."

He added that "the worst possible thing would be to drop the development agenda, because it holds the key to the economic challenge."

Brown argued that food and agriculture shortages could not be solved without the involvement of developing countries.

The G8 -- comprising Britain, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Canada and Japan -- meets from Monday in Toyako and is expected to explore ways of stimulating the world economy in the face of rising food and oil prices.

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