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ST PETERSBURG, Russia, June 10 (Reuters) Finance ministers from the Group of Eight nations on Saturday warned fast-growing economies against tempting poor countries into new debt traps and told them to coordinate with other lenders.

China and Brazil have been singled out in the past as prime examples of countries that are handing out loans to some of the world's poorest countries, even as rich countries are cancelling debt they were owed.

While the pair avoided being named and shamed, ministers from the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia made their feelings clear in a statement issued after their meeting in St. Petersburg.

''We call for enhanced coordination among all members of the growing donor community, and alignment of aid programs with partner countries' development priorities,'' the statement said.

''We deem it essential to prevent the build up of unsustainable debt in low-income countries.'' The host of the meeting, Russia, is a member of the Paris Club of creditor nations -- unlike China and Brazil -- and showed it was fully on the side of the developed rich states, who want new lenders to take account of debt sustainability.

''We don't want some countries to forgive debt and others to exploit this opportunity to extend new debts,'' Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told a news conference. ''That's why we need coordination.'' INNOVATION VERSUS COORDINATION Such sentiments were shared by World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz Paul Wolfowitz.

''We hope that new development partners will work together with the old to satisfy the real needs of the population, so that money is used for development and not for pursuing political needs,'' Wolfowitz said on Friday.

''Another challenge is that donors, and I am talking about old donors as well, do not pursue lending in such a way that these countries become heavily indebted again.'' Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega defended the lending strategy pursued by his and other fast-growing economies after meeting G8 ministers in an ''outreach'' session joined by China, India, Australia, South Korea and Nigeria.

''The novelty here is that the emerging economies have now shifted from receiving aid to making it available for other countries,'' Mantega told reporters.

''Our proposals are that this aid is given not only through traditional mechanisms that have been in place but also though new innovative mechanisms that may be used so that this aid is not subject to conditionality as it was previously.'' However, members of the G8 stressed the need for better cooperation.

''There needs to be more coordinated behaviour so that we do not return to a spiral which could case problems,'' French Finance Minister Thierry Breton told a press conference.

While ministers were loathe to break diplomatic protocol by naming any particular country, a case in point has been Chinese lending to Angola.

Beijing offered oil-rich Angola a $2 billion loan to repair its infrastructure in January 2005 and followed it up in March 2006 with an agreement to add another $1 billion.

The deal allowed Luanda to avoid dealing with the International Monetary Fund, which has long criticised its finances as excessively opaque.

The Angolan Finance Ministry said in April its minister had started talks to reschedule its foreign debt with the Paris Club of international lenders, which hold a chunk of its estimated $9.5 billion in external debt, much of which is in arrears.

(Additional reporting by Gleb Bryanski, Douglas Busvine) REUTERS MP BD1956