Mar 28, 2005. /Lesprom Network/. The G8 group of industrialised countries has agreed to control illegal logging of forests by buying timber only from legal sources. The US, which resisted the deal, accepted pressure from the environment and development ministers meeting in Derby, England, on condition that the curbs do not interfere with free trade. Developing countries, beset by corruption and criminal operations to steal timber from their forests, have appealed to developed countries to impose controls to stop the lucrative illegal log trade. By preventing government departments, local authorities and all public contractors from buying timber without legal certification, ministers hope to put pressure on the timber industry to get its suppliers to become legitimate. Governments also undertook to "influence the private sector" to use only legally sourced timber. The British development secretary, Hilary Benn, welcomed the agreement "enormously". He said a second part of the process was to help developing countries to police their logging industries and introduce proper certification and labelling schemes, and to stamp out corruption. "We have to work at this problem from both ends if we are to succeed," he said, "but this is a tremendous start." The ministers also discussed the disastrous effect of climate change on Africa's poorest people and agreed on a series of recommendations for the G8 leaders when they meet at Gleneagles in Scotland in July. Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, said there was complete agreement between the ministers that it was impossible to tackle poverty and provide clean water, sanitation and electricity to Africa's poor without also tackling climate change. The senior US delegate, Paula Dobriansky, under secretary for global affairs, refused to discuss Washington's reaction when she left the meeting. The conference also announced a scheme to extract electricity from the hot rocks of the earth's crust along the length of the Rift Valley in Africa. The project, which could provide a seventh of the continent's electricity, involves building a series of power stations from Djibouti in the north to Mozambique, a distance of more than 1,800km. Klaus Topfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, told the meeting he had asked for $35m from the World Bank's global environment facility towards the $200m project to prospect for sites for power stations.