'What a paradox we are witnessing today! Using the bailouts of the international banking system, the scourge of hunger on the planet could have easily been eliminated,' Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said in her address to the General Assembly.

'The optimism at the turn of the century leading to hope of the 'millennium of hope' seems to be dissipating. It is estimated that the increase in food price alone has driven more than 100 million people into extreme poverty,' she said.

'In turn, financial instability is today afflicting many economies, threatening to generate a worldwide trend towards recession in which, as always, those most affected finally will be the world's poorest.'

World Bank President Robert Zoellick also painted a fairly grim scenario at a luncheon devoted to solving the world food crisis.

'Some of the trade statistics and balance payments issues for some of these (poorer) countries, some of them are moving much closer to the edge and the question now is whether the financial turmoil pushes them over the edge,' Mr Zoellick said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon opened the General Assembly on Tuesday voicing concerns about the effects of 'a confluence of large scale interrelated crises,' referring to the financial crisis, food crisis, high oil prices and the climate change.

And speaker after speaker echoed Mr Ban's concerns.

Presidents from Brazil to Guyana referred to Wall Street's woes and many took the opportunity to chide the United States for failing to follow the same financial prescriptions it had doled out to them over the years.

'There is clear evidence that many of the standards and much of the scrutiny that are applied routinely to smaller countries were not applied to some larger countries which actually pose much greater systematic risk,' Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo said in his address.

Other long-time rivals of the United States, including Cuba, linked the financial woes to everything from the food crisis to high oil prices.

Cuban Vice-President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura accused 'a few countries in the industrialised North' of being behind the world food crisis and suggested that the US shared some of the blame for recent oil price hikes.

'The rise in oil prices is the result of irrational consumption, strong speculation and imperial war adventures,' he said.

Developing nations 'have paid, and will continue to pay the cost and the consequences of the irrationality, wastefulness and speculation of a few counties in the industrialised North who are responsible for the world food crisis.' -- AP