By Lesley Wroughton

UNITED NATIONS, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Global leaders from U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to former U.S. President Bill Clinton urged business executives on Wednesday to get involved in ending a global food crisis pushing more people into poverty.

Soaring food and fuel prices have focused attention on years of underinvestment in agricultural in developing countries, now having to import food at enormous costs.

Ban has made the Millennium Development Goals, a U.N. agreed target to reduce poverty by 2015, a theme of this year's U.N. General Assembly. Progress in reaching the goals will be discussed by U.N. member countries on Thursday.

"We need more private sector engagement with this campaign," Ban told the business forum. "Government may hold the primary responsibility of the Millennium Development Goals, but we we all have a common interest in success."

With private-sector help, farmers could access financing to buy seeds and fertilizers, and increase food production through better technology, while better roads could help them get their products to market, the leaders said.

Clinton said improving markets for farmers would not require major capital investments, citing work by his charitable organization in Rwanda and Ethiopia.

"Basically, agriculture in developing country after developing country has been subject to 27 years of system neglect, so they're doing the best they can, with food they can grow, but can't sell," Clinton said.

With the U.N. warning that higher prices could push 100 million people deeper into poverty, Ban said the world faced a development emergency.

"That is why we have to boost our private-public alliance," he said.

Among business officials at the meeting was Carl-Henric Svanberg, chief executive of Ericsson; Craig Barrett, chairman of Intel Corp, Hiromasa Yonekura, president of Sumitomo, Neville Isdell, chairman of Coca-Cola, and Chad Holliday, chairman and CEO of Dupont.

'A HUMAN DISGRACE'

Rocker and anti-poverty activist Bob Geldof said it was " a human disgrace" that the world allowed people to go hungry.

"The fact that Africa gets $2 billion every year for agriculture is pathetic when Europe gets 40 billion euros and America gets $60 billion for their agriculture," he told executives. "It makes no sense."

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said costlier food and fuel was pushing countries to a tipping point, and the question now was whether the global financial turmoil could push them over the edge.

"When all the dust settles there will be a financial rescue," Zoellick said, referring to the $700 billion U.S. bailout plan for troubled Wall Street banks. "But we also need to have a human rescue and to accomplish this we are going to have to interconnect public and private institutions."

Clinton said governments could not tackle the food crisis alone and needed private sector involvement.

"The energy crisis and supply realities alone ... are going to drive us to agricultural self-sufficiency anyway," he said. "The question is how fast we're doing to do it and how well we're going to do it? The potential is staggering." (Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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