Sao Paulo  - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took a swipe Thursday at world leaders gathered for the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, describing it as a meeting of a "world that is dying."

Chavez was speaking at the anti-globalization World Social Forum (WSF) currently underway in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belem. The WSF developed as a counter balance to the economic forum in the Swiss resort of Davos.

Chavez said the event in Belem was "where a new world, a new era is born" at a time when the globe grapples with the widening economic crisis.

"While the world that is dying is meeting in Davos, the world that is being born is meeting here," Chavez said.

Chavez was at WSF with presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Fernando Lugo of Paraguay.

Correa called the social forum part of a solution "in a perverse system based on greed," through the integration of emerging economies, particularly in Latin America.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was also in Belem Thursday, and was to meet his Latin American counterparts, but did not participate in any public events.

Forum participants said leftists would have to step forward and take action to come up with solutions to global problems.

"If we do not put forward a solution, it will come from Davos, with more capitalism and fewer rights," said sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos.

"Social movements cannot be just spectators in their own future, but have to be active in their own development," said Katia Maia, the representative in Brazil of humanitarian aid group Oxfam International.

About 120,000 people from 150 countries were expected to take part in the forum's 2,600 activities.

WSF was born in 2001 in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where it was held also in 2002, 2003 and 2005. India hosted it in 2004, while Venezuela did so in 2006 and Kenya in 2007. In 2008 there was no one single site, but the forum was held simultaneously in 82 different countries. dpa