Annan warns G8 over poor

United Nations - The UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, warned the world's major industrial nations yesterday that the liberalised global economy risked sidelining the bulk of the world's population. In a letter to the German Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, who will host the G8 summit in Cologne next month, Mr Annan called for debt relief for the world's poorest nations without further cuts in official government assistance.