New Delhi: The global economic turmoil poses a grave threat to developing nations even though their contribution to the cause of the crisis is negligible, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said here Tuesday.

"Given the magnitude of the global financial and economic crisis today, the developing countries may become its worst victims even though they were not the cause of the crisis," Mukherjee said while delivering his address at the general session of the Afro-Asian Rural Development Organisation (AARDO).

The AARDO is a 30-member organisation of countries from Asia and Africa with the aim of eradication of poverty and illiteracy through cooperation.

The organisation was set up in 1962 after the Afro-Asian Rural Reconstruction Conference of New Delhi in 1961, and has India, Egypt, Japan, Libya and Malaysia as its founding members.

Mukherjee urged the member countries to step up their official development assistance in a tougher economic climate so as to ensure that they meet the millennium development goal (MDG) of complete poverty alleviation by 2015.

He, however, added that because of the economic crisis, many countries may not be able to meet their MDGs and other internationally agreed goals by 2015.