The grouping, which also included Mexico and South Africa, said they can help increase the participation of developing countries in the processes to shape globalization strategies, according to an e-mailed statement issued in Berlin yesterday by the office of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

India, Asia's fourth-biggest economy and home to 1.1 billion people, is seeking to assert the developing world's rising economic strength through demands for permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council. The South Asian nation has also said it will snub demands by western nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions as it would impede economic growth.

Leaders of the five countries said that ``developing countries must participate more actively in the consolidation of strategies and initiatives that effectively address the challenges of a globalizing and increasingly interdependent world,'' according to the statement on the talks held on the sidelines of the Group of Eight meeting.

The U.S., the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, blocked an attempt to include in a G-8 agreement a pledge to cut global warming pollution in half by 2050, even as the European Union and Japan vowed to go ahead and start their own emission reductions. Instead, the U.S. agreed it would ``consider seriously'' such measures and take part in international talks to craft a new treaty on climate change by 2009, the year President George W. Bush leaves office.

Water, Extinction

A United Nations panel on climate change in April said global warming will result in bigger water shortages, the extinction of more flora and fauna, besides frequent droughts and floods as man- made emissions heat up the earth.

The G-8 meeting offers emerging economies the opportunity to collaborate on climate change, energy, cross-border investments and research, according to the statement by Singh's office.

``The consensus view was that all of these challenges must be addressed from a multilateral, regional and bilateral perspective,'' it said.

A meeting of the G-8 with Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa is being organized today. The countries also participated in the two earlier summits of the G-8.

China this week said it plans to use hydropower, nuclear energy, biomass fuels and gas to help cut 950 million metric tons of so-called greenhouse gas output by 2010 as the country closes in on the U.S. as the biggest producer of harmful emissions.