There are fears that development goals will not be met in Africa
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Concerns are growing that the situation in Iraq may distract international attention from issues like poverty reduction, health and education.
These development goals are on the agenda for a meeting of a policy making ministers' committee of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington on Sunday.
A report by World Bank staff for the meeting says there are considerable risks that key development goals will not be met, and major work is needed to turn the situation round.
On a similar theme, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, says the Iraq war is diverting the world's attention away from Africa.
"Crises like the one in Iraq impact negatively on the funding for Africa, where there are three million refugees," Mr Lubbers said.
"The world should now focus on Africa not Iraq."
He said the UN refugee agency needed an additional $100m to fund repatriation programmes for Africa's refugees.
Developed countries needed to do more to help refugees fleeing from civil conflicts in the continent, Mr Lubbers said.
'The other war'
The World Bank paper warns that on current trends, most countries in Africa south of the Sahara will fall short of the poverty reduction goal.
For other objectives, especially in health and education, the risks of failure are more pervasive across the regions of the world.
Some of the countries concerned and development lobby groups are anxious that the international focus on Iraq may divert attention away from what the World Bank President, James Wolfensohn, called "the other war" - the war on poverty.
He also said that it is an urgent issue where work should not be delayed from one meeting to the next because of other priorities.
He noted that Iraq does not appear on the agenda for this meeting of the World Bank and IMF development committee, but he couldn't guarantee that no one would raise it.
Both he and the head of the International Monetary Fund, Horst Kohler, have however already made it clear that they are keen to get involved in the reconstruction of Iraq.
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