By DPA
Berlin : Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus urged members of the G8 club of wealthy nations Monday to show more commitment in the global fight against poverty.
This includes adherence to the UN Millennium Development Goals and taking climate protection seriously, he told a meeting in Berlin ahead of the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.
The Millennium Goals, set in 2000, range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by the target date of 2015.
Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, said overcoming poverty was a matter of will.
"Do we want a world without poverty or don't we" was the question leaders had to ask, he said.
He pointed to the micro-credits given by the Grameen Bank, which he said had reached 80 percent of Bangladesh's poor. The repayment rate was 99 percent, he said.
"It's not a question of whether poor people are creditworthy, but whether banks are humane," Yunus said.
The Bangladesh economist shared the 2006 Nobel Prize for Peace with the Grameen Bank he set up in 1976 with the aim of establishing micro-credit schemes for the poor.