BBC News with Nick Kelly

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has warned world leaders not to use the economic downturn as an excuse for missing targets on reducing poverty. At a summit in New York to review the Millennium Development Goals, he said they could still be achieved by the target date of 2015, but the progress was fragile. Our diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall reports.

The mood here is both positive and anxious. The top goal to cut by half the number of people living in hunger and abject poverty by 2015 does look as though it will be met partly due to extraordinary growth rates in China, India and Brazil. There has been encouraging progress on getting all children access to primary schooling, and in tackling diseases like HIV, Aids infection and malaria, but other goals are way off track, especially reducing infant and maternal deaths, and progress has been uneven. In places, the very poorest have got poorer still, as aid has failed to reach them.