Leaders and economists from Western Europe to East Asia Tuesday urged the United States to go beyond reviving a failed domestic bailout and start working on a new global financial system.

David Smick, a global strategist and author of "The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers of the Global Economy," said the next U.S. president should immediately call for a second "Bretton Woods" conference to devise a new doctrine of international finance.

"I am convinced that the sickness runs deep and that we need to rethink the entire financial and monetary system, as we did in Bretton Woods ... to create the tools for worldwide regulation made necessary by the globalization of trade," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in the French city of Toulon on Monday.

He said that officials from France, Britain, Germany and Italy will meet next week in Paris with the Continent's top financial officials to prepare for a proposed global summit on the economic crisis. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will participate. The 27-nation European Union said Tuesday that the crisis "has become a global problem" and Washington has a "special responsibility" to resolve it.

"It is quite threatening what is going on," Hungarian Foreign Minister Kinga Goncz said Tuesday during a visit to Washington.