President
George W Bush has invited world leaders to gather in the US
by the end of the year to discuss
reform of the global financial system.
The summit
would be the first of a series announced after talks between
Mr Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and EU Commission
chief Manuel Barroso. Before he arrived at Camp David, the
US presidential retreat in the state of Maryland, the French
leader warned the world could not
"continue to run the economy of the 21st Century with
instruments of the economy of the 20th Century".
After the
meeting, Mr Bush said: "It is
essential that we work together because we are in this
crisis together." He went on to
invite world leaders to an economic summit after the US
election in November, to discuss responses to the current
financial crisis. "Together we will work to modernise and
strengthen our nations' financial systems so we can help
ensure this crisis doesn't happen again," he added.
Mr
Sarkozy said the crisis could offer a "great opportunity"
to build the capitalism of the future and leave behind the
"hateful practices" of the past. "We cannot continue along
the same lines because the same problems will trigger the
same disasters," he warned.
European
Commission President Manuel Barroso, who also took part in
the talks, said: "We need a
new global financial order."
That
summit would seek to "review progress
being made to address the current crisis and to seek
agreement on principles of reform needed to avoid a
repetition," the leaders said in their statement.
"Later summits would be designed to
implement agreement on specific steps to be taken to meet
those principles," it added.
Other world leaders are to be consulted over the plan.
