WASHINGTON, April 9 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Wednesday called for a fully coordinated response by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and United Nations to deal with rising food prices. In an April 8 letter, Brown asked Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, as chair of the Group of Eight industrial nations, to ask the international agencies to develop a global strategy to deal with the crisis. "The international community needs a fully coordinated response," Brown wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, before the World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington this weekend. "We need both short-term action to deal with immediate hardship, and a medium-term response, which will provide a framework for tackling the opportunities and challenges," he said. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Leslie Adler)
Residents walk past U.N. peacekeepers armoured vehicles behind Haiti's National Palace in Port-au-Prince, April 9, 2008. Small groups of Haitian protesters enraged by soaring food prices returned to the streets of ...