WASHINGTON: Developing countries said on Friday they could fall victim to the global credit crunch that began in the West and blasted industrial nations for not living up to promises for aid.

The Group of 24, which brings together developing and large emerging countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, said the world economy faced its most difficult situation in years.

"Developed countries have the means to deal with the problem, but we who are developing countries, or emerging countries, could collapse under the weight of such a crisis," G24 chairman Jean-Claude Masangu Mulongo, governor of the central bank of the Democratic Republic of Congo, told reporters.

"Our banking systems could come really crashing down."

They also called on the International Monetary Fund to monitor the policies of Western economies more closely.

The grouping includes Egypt, India, Iran, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Pakistan, South Africa, Syria, Venezuela, Algeria, Peru and smaller economies like Ghana, Gabon and Trinidad & Tobago. China is a G24 observer.

Mulongo said the United States had come up with a $700 billion rescue package in a week, yet it could not make good on promises of increased aid from a poverty summit in 2005.

"We heard promises being made for development and to help countries in trouble," he said, "These promises have not been respected in the face of an international crisis, which may spread very quickly, become systemic, with the risk of the international, whole world economy falling apart, or collapsing."

Many African countries are angered by the prospect that the crisis could undo years of hard-won economic gains, and by the West's lack of oversight of its financial sector after years of lecturing to developing countries about the importance of prudent economic policies.