French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for a summit of leaders of the world's main economic powers later this year to examine the lessons learned from the current financial crisis, which he described as the worst since the Great Depression.
Addressing the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly yesterday, Mr Sarkozy also urged the European Union to create a "continent-wide common economic space which would unite Russia and Europe.''
The deepening international financial crisis has weighed heavily on the summit of world leaders at the United Nations, with UN chief Ban Ki-moon stressing the need to "restore order to the international financial markets.''
In his speech, Mr Sarkozy said it was the "duty of the heads of state and government of the countries most directly concerned to meet before the end of the year to examine the lessons of the most serious financial crisis the world has experienced since that of the 1930s.''
World leaders called for urgent steps to tackle the global financial crisis and said the time had come for a sweeping reform of multilateral institutions, including the UN Security Council.
US President George Bush, making his farewell speech to the 192-member assembly, assured worried world leaders that his administration and the US Congress would approve an emergency $US700 billion ($840 billion) Wall Street bailout "in the urgent timeframe required''.
Mr Sarkozy later told a press conference that he had in mind a ``G8 format'', referring to the eight leading economic powers, that could be opened to "emerging countries''.
"Let us rebuild together a regulated capitalism in which whole swathes of financial activity are not left to the sole judgment of market operators, in which banks do their job, which is to finance economic development rather than engage in speculation,'' Mr Sarkozy, who holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, told the assembly.
Both Mr Sarkozy and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva pressed for a sweeping reform of multilateral institutions, including the powerful Security Council.
The French leader said enlarging the 15-member UN Security Council as well as the G8 club of leading industrialised nations - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and Russia - was not ``just a matter of fairness, (but) also the necessary condition for being able to act effectively.''
AP, AFP
