DAKAR, Senegal (AP)--African leaders urged the world's richest countries on Feb. 4 to offer greater access to their markets and insisted agriculture should remain high on the agenda to eradicate hunger and poverty.

"The world will soon have to feed more than 9 billion human beings, and I am convinced that together we can take up the challenge," Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade said at the opening of a two-day international forum in Dakar on the world agricultural trends.

French President Chirac, who attended the opening before heading to Republic of Congo, strongly defended European agricultural policy, saying the E.U. was "not an enemy of agriculture in developing nations."

The two-day conference--convened by Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade--discussed the agricultural gap between rich and poor nations.

Hundreds of agricultural experts and six heads of states--from Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and France--attended along with representatives from the U.K. and Morocco.

Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo insisted on the need to make agriculture a priority for developing nations, while urging industrialized countries to "open up more their markets."

Chirac also touched on the world cotton trade, saying "current practices are deeply traumatizing and unfair for African cotton producers."

African cotton producers have often blamed rich countries' domestic agricultural subsidies for pricing their crops out of world markets.

Agriculture is the mainstay of many African economies.

Date: 2/24/05

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