DAVOS. Switzerland, Feb 1: A top international Monetary Fund 'official vigorously defended the organisation Sunday against criticism that it disregards the social impact of its rescue plans for crisis hit countries, says AP.

"This is arrant nonsense from people who have not read or looked at the programmes." the IMF’s No 2 Official, Stanley Fischer, told a gathering of business and political heavyweights. "It is time that it stopped."

In a report this January, the 182 nation organisation rejected charges that some of the austerity measures it required Thailand. South Korea and Indonesia to pursue were misguided and worsened the crisis.

However, it conceded some mistakes were made, including misjudging the severity of the recessions that followed adoption of IMF recommendations in exchange for billion-dollar rescue packages.

Fischer said it is impossible to avoid shrinking economies in dealing with crises, but. "it is equally an illusion to imagine that the people who design these programmes are unaware of their social consequences and do not care."

Citing turnarounds in South Korea and Thailand as evidence of the programmes success, he said each one takes into account the circumstances of the country involved.

"It'is an outrage and an offence to be told things which ar? patently not true." Fischer said. Hf I .say that with some feeling it is because I have heard this now in this conference repeatedly by people who should know better."

This year's World Economic Forum gathering has seen widespread calls for some reform of the global economy, but 111 Ue agreement on how that should be done.

Leaders including South Africa's Nelson Mandela and

Egypt's Hosni Mubarak have pointed to pitfalls in the free-market approach.

Mubarak said it must be rethought because it has dramatically failed door people.

"Our global village has caught fire,'' he said. "We have put out most of it. but there are still pockets that can threaten us all again."

Calling for business leaders to accept largely ignored United Nations labour and other rights conventions, UN Secretary-. General Kofi Ann^n said the new global market has to win the confidence of people marginalised by globalisation.

Sharing a platform with Indonesian and Indian officials. Fischer stated that "nobody here wishes to withdraw from globalisation."

'That way isn't there." he added. "We have to build a better of the Conservative group in the European Union's parliament, basea in Strasbourg. France,'