World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said on Wednesday that World Trade Organization (WTO) members must "rewrite the rules of an unfair trading system" when they meet next week in Hong Kong and so lift more than a billion people out of Desperate poverty.

"Unless the people of Africa and other poor countries have access to markets to sell their products, they will not escape poverty or be able to give their children a better future," he said in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington.

Trade rather than aid is the best way to ensure schooling and health care for the many whose hopes for a better life are being held back, he said.

Expectations for the WTO meeting in Hong Kong will start on next Tuesday and the meeting have been diluted with no deal in sight on the key issue of agricultural commerce.

"Countries sitting at the negotiating table must look beyond their own vested interests and remember that if Doha fails, it is the world's poor ... who will suffer the most," Wolfowitz said.

Source: Xinhua