BERLIN -- President Bill Clinton told a Berlin conference on retooling government for todays global information society that wealthier countries should provide the money and the technical support for poorer nations to use the Web to improve lives and fight poverty in the developing world.

Clinton told the weekend conference that the Web provides the means for downloading school books in poor villages and marketing native crafts in cyberspace.

He said he endorses the concept, "because it will move more people more quickly out of poverty, I think, than anything thats ever been out there, if you do it right."

Clinton also delivered similar remarks to the Russian Duma on Monday. "During the 1990s, the volume of international trade almost doubled," he said. "Links among businesses, universities, advocacy groups, charities and churches have multiplied across physical space and cyberspace. In the developing world some of the poorest villages are beginning to be connected to the information superhighway in ways that are opening up unbelievable opportunities for education and for development."

"We should recognize what an enormous potential the Internet has for bridging economic, educational and social divides," said Clinton, as he addressed the Berlin conference on Saturday. He noted how Canada employs the Internet to connect remote Eskimo villages. "That has enormous health implications, enormous educational implications and, my guess is, enormous economic implications," Clinton said.

He added that if schools in poor or remote regions had Internet access, they would have the same avenue to knowledge as the rest of the world. "If you have a printer and a computer in a poor village, you dont have to be able to afford textbooks anymore," he said. "Its a far more efficient way for government to spread universal information."

Martin Stone, Newsbytes