Nearly 200 parliamentarians meeting in Ottawa have agreed to form a Canadian-based organisation to fight government corruption.

The group, with chapters in Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and Southeast Asia, plans to develop a code of conduct and best practices that will strengthen the ability of parliamentarians to root out bribery, kickbacks and other corruption.

''In some places, government is no longer accountable. It gets away with many, many things, and in some parts of the world, gets away with murder. We have to strengthen the institution of Parliament,'' said John Williams, the Canadian MP who chaired the meeting that created the Global Organisation of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC).

''What we have made is a small seed, a seed that is going to be taken back to all parts of the world,'' he added.

About 170 elected legislators met to discuss ways of stopping systemic corruption. They also held informal sessions with representatives of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Central office

Williams said the new group will have a central office here and several regional offices in still undetermined locations.

''(Corruption) is often cultural. We've heard about the drug money in Latin America, the Russian Mafia, the white-collar crime in North America. It's different in different parts of the world.''

''To talk about it as a monolithic thing is to compare apples and oranges. But we need an organisation that can oversee the local chapters, and that is what we have created here.''

As Williams spoke, Canada's Liberal government was being hounded by opposition MPs for awarding contracts without a competition to an associate of Solicitor General Lawrence MacAulay.

A similar controversy earlier this year forced Prime Minister Jean Chretien to reshuffle his cabinet and send former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano to Denmark as Canada's ambassador.

An African MP said the new body would boost the global fight against corruption in government, which he related to terrorism.

Fight it together

"Corruption is a major issue that destroys economies of many, many countries in the world. Corruption crosses all borders. We must fight it together, or perish," Musikari Kombo, a member of Kenya's national assembly, told the conference.

"It's about time that we really started combating corruption,'' said Inder Jit, a member of India's parliament. ''We all swear by democracy, yet democracy is getting denigrated. People are becoming disillusioned."

He said democracy was once regarded as a means to better lives, but is now an end in itself. "Now all you have is outward trappings of a democracy," Jit said. "People don't count. They count only when elections come."

A legislator from South America urged the new body to widen its scope beyond the unethical practices of elected officials.

"What about the others who engage in corruption, like corporations and banks?" said Juan Adolfo Singer of Uruguay. "If there's no political will to end the bribery and reduce the bribery funding, then the fight against corruption will not be successful."

Corruption must be battled, Loum Nadaodourmngue, a parliamentarian from Chad, told the conference.

"It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer," she said, "especially in my country given the poverty. It is imperative to ensure the fight against corruptive issues."

International intervention

The new body should study how it could offer "international intervention in cases where massive corruption happens and we can't handle it at the local level", said Kiraitu Murangi, another Kenyan MP.

GOPAC will establish a board of executives and meet again in two years.

Each chapter will be run with the help of a non-governmental organisation (NGO). The Parliamentary Centre in Ottawa, an NGO specialising in governance, is acting as the interim secretariat of GOPAC.

''Corruption has been such a destructive force in every part of the world. Where there is more corruption, there is less prosperity,'' Williams said after the conference ended. IPS