A coalition of developing and emerging market countries has attacked the idea that they should be compelled to adhere to international standards of fiscal and monetary policy.

The Group of 24 (G24) countries, which includes influential emerging market nations such as India and South Africa, said the application of codes and standards was "highly asymmetric".

They called on industrialised countries to first demand transparency from their hedge funds.

"Standards in the area of transparency are being pressed upon developing countries without a commensurate application of corresponding obligations for disclosure by financial institutions, including currently unregulated highly-leveraged institutions," said the G24 in a statement issued over the weekend.

Last week Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer who chairs the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) policy-setting monetary and financial committee, called for such assessments to become a standard part of the IMF's regular "Article IV" reports on its member countries.

The Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations, which met at the weekend, supported "the fund's central role in the surveillance of codes and standards and promoting their implementation".

In astatement, the G7 backed the recent call by the Financial Stability Forum - the international network of central bankers and financial market regulators - for incentives for countries to adopt such standards.

The G7 has supported increased transparency as part of its strategy for avoiding future financial crises. However, the G24 made it clear that such incentives should not involve any suspicion of compulsion. "Compliance with such standards and codes should not be prematurely integrated into the Article IV consultation process and must not become a condition for use of IMF resources," it said.

The views of G24 countries ran counter to a belief held by some officials that opposition to the drive towards transparency was lessening.

Mervyn King, the Bank of England's deputy governor who chaired a committee of the former Group of 22 countries on the subject, said this weekend that "real progress had been made" with the IMF reports on the observance of standards and codes.

He said the reports did not compel countries to adhere to standards, merely that they should be transparent about whether or not they did follow them. "Transparency cannot be mandatory but what cannot be avoided is transparency about transparency," he said.

But the tone of the G24's statement suggested the entire project was still encountering opposition. The drive towards transparency within the IMF and World Bank has engendered a backlash recently.