BRIC club to boost ties, seek to fight food crisis

By Conor Sweeney

YEKATERINBURG, Russia, May 16 (Reuters) - The world's biggest emerging market economies -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- agreed on Friday to formalise their "BRIC" club for the first time to affirm their global economic clout.

The four BRIC countries, which account for more than one tenth of the world's gross domestic product, said they would boost cooperation on a range of fronts and work on ways to ease the burden of soaring global food prices.

"Building a more democratic international system founded on the rule of law and multilateral diplomacy is an imperative of our time," foreign ministers from the BRIC countries said in a joint communique after talks in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg.

They "confirmed the aspirations of the BRIC countries to work together with each other and other states in the interests of strengthening international security and stability."

The term BRIC was coined by Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs to describe how the four swiftly growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are likely to rival and then overtake many of the West's leading economies in the next half century.

The Yekaterinburg meeting was the first stand-alone meeting of BRIC foreign ministers.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the BRIC countries had cushioned the developed world from a bigger economic slowdown over recent years.

"They (large developing countries) have prevented the world from facing a worsening situation. This is a different situation from the past, when there was a global slowdown," said Mukherjee. "In this area, it is clear BRIC can increasingly play a key role," he said.