DAVOS, Switzerland Street protests in Davos and Zurich were echoed inside the confines of the World Economic Forum on Sunday as political leaders described how globalization had failed the world's poor.

The meeting of the business elite, an annual celebration of global commerce, has been buffeted by an anti-globalization movement that has gained momentum since clashes at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999.

Protesters ran riot in Zurich and other cities on Saturday after police suppressed protests in this chic Swiss ski resort. Across the other side of the world thousands have united in an "anti-Davos" at an alternative forum in southern Brazil.

South African President Thabo Mbeki called for reform of global institutions to protect the poor.

"When people talk about globalization, what we see is a global world that is divided into two. There is a structural fault of poverty. On one side of that fault are the powerful and the wealthy; on the other side are the powerless and the poor," he said.

Mbeki said no country could build a fortress, but he condemned the impoverishment of millions caught in Africa's debt trap and the collapse of the Indonesian economy two years ago, both crises laid at the door of globalization.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the world's poor needed a better deal from the global economy.

"But it is not the case that most people would wish to reverse globalization. It is that they aspire to a different and better kind than we have today."

The Davos summit has made this year's theme "sustaining growth and bridging the divides".

(Reuter)