Brown backs G8 expansion

LONDON, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown backed on Tuesday a plan to expand the Group of Eight (G8), allowing the five emerging economies to join the G8.

"The G8+5 meets on a regular basis but only for a small amount of the time that the G8 comes together. Now there are proposals to extend that relationship and to broaden it so that India, China, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil are part of these discussions and that's something we favor also," Brown said at his first monthly press conference in 2008.

"The world's institutions are right for major reforms, the World Bank, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the U.N., the different international organizations built in 1940s got to be reformed," said Brown

"The reform of the Security Council and the G8 is very much part of that," Brown added.