PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA - CAMBODIAN Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Monday that a proposed Opec-style rice cartel in Southeast Asia would ensure global food security, rejecting concerns that it would increase hunger and poverty.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej said last week that his country had agreed in principle to form a rice price-fixing cartel with Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia as costs of the staple grain skyrocket.

The grouping of nations along the Mekong river would be similar to the oil cartel Opec, and would be called the Organisation of Rice Exporting Countries (Orec).

'We will not only ensure food security in each of our own countries, but will help solve the entire problem of (food) shortages across the region and the world,' Mr Hun Sen said.

'When there are shortages, we will not stockpile the rice or increase prices,' the premier said.

'We really want to help ensure food security,' he added.

The Asian Development Bank has come out against the planned cartel, while senior Philippine officials have blasted the proposal as 'anti-poor', saying it would only exacerbate hunger and poverty.

Mr Hun Sen urged other Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines, not to worry about the cartel.

'The formation of the organisation is not meant to strangle the throats of countries that do not have rice,' he said.

The five proposed members of the cartel will discuss the organisation at regional talks in October, Hun Sen said, adding that the Mekong river nations would export up to 15 million tonnes of rice a year.

World rice prices have soared this year, a trend blamed on higher energy and fertiliser costs, greater global demand, droughts, the loss of rice farmland to biofuel plantations, and price speculation.

Mr Hun Sen on Wednesday appealed to the country's farmers to start growing rice and other crops, saying most of the population would benefit from the global food crisis.