President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday said preparations for the June summit to assess the impact of the global economic crisis on developing countries was going ahead despite attempts by certain unnamed nations to lower the scope and profile of the sessions.

The financial crisis, "worse than the Great Depression" of 1929"is affecting the entire world and was brought about mainly as a result of social irresponsibility, greed -- insatiable greed – on the part of a few countries" while "the vast majority that had nothing to do with that were paying the heaviest price," said the former Nicaraguan foreign minister.

While not naming the countries in both cases, d'Escoto said they were the usual countries attempting to "control" the United Nations.

The General Assembly agreed last week to convene a high-level conference on the impact of the crisis on development, scheduled to be held from June 1 to 3.

D'Escoto told reporters at UN World Headquarters in New York that the conclave "will be most important in the history of the United Nations."

Only on Tuesday the UN Secretariat had finished translating modalities on the three days of meetings and sent them to member states, so the GA president begged off on naming the number or names of heads of state who will be participating in the conclave.

The enabling GA resolution calls on member states to agree on a concise outcome document based on a draft to be prepared by d'Escoto through an open, transparent and inclusive process led by UN member states.

D'Escoto called the summit "the G192," to reflect the total number of UN member states, as opposed to the recent G20 meeting of 20 governments in London.

The GA president said, "It should be clear this is not one meeting. This is the beginning of a process that will take longer, take many more meetings, but unlike other meetings that say we will follow up in six years, and so on, we can not afford that luxury. This is an emergency situation. The world will be looking at us."

The first meeting will deal with topics requiring immediate action while other discussions will involve "laying foundations for the economic and financial architecture" of the future, he said.

The future architecture is expected to include consideration of a move away from the US dollar as the currency of choice for international reserves.

"Many many countries trusted the dollar because they (the United States and allies) preached economic restructuring and fiscal responsibility but now we find out they had the least of that, our dear host country (the United States)," d'Escoto said, adding that "it allowed the United States to go ahead and print" money.

"We have to make sure we have a more stable world economy," he said. "That was one of the fundamental purposes when the United Nations was founded."