Madrid - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged on Monday that the administration of President Barack Obama would seek a new engagement between donors, states, NGOs and the private sector to fight hunger.

Clinton addressed a United Nations conference in the Spanish capital Madrid over a video.

The conference bringing together ministers or other delegates from about 100 countries charted action against the global food crisis aggravated by the economic crash.

The fight against hunger was among Obama's priorities, Clinton said, stressing the need for developing countries to be able to invest in food production.

Jacques Diouf, general director of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said the number of malnourished people had increased by tens of millions in the recent years, reaching a total of 963 million worldwide.

This happened while world cereal production reached a new record in 2008, he pointed out.

Development aid to agriculture and cattle raising had gone down from 18 per cent of global aid in 1980 to only 3 per cent, Diouf said, urging the international community to mobilize more resources against hunger.

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos stressed the negative impact of rising food prices and the international financial slowdown, describing the food crisis as a threat to global stability.

The meeting bringing together UN officials, representatives of international agencies and the civil society was to be closed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Tuesday.

The conference was aimed at charting the progress in meeting the goals of the Rome food summit in June 2008.

It will draw a road map to ensure the enforcement of the Rome agreements, issuing a Madrid declaration on how to move forward, according to Spanish government sources.

Representatives of several NGOs demonstrated outside the conference building, stressing that the meeting should not become a "farce."

The demonstrators accused the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank of having created the food crisis with their neo-liberal policies. (dpa)