PM seeks global action at G20 talks
Gordon Brown is joining fellow world leaders in Washington for a crisis summit to try to halt the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
US president George Bush summoned the heads of the G20 group of leading global economies amid fears of business collapses and job losses around the world as global output slumps.
Mr Brown has been leading calls for concerted international action - with sweeping tax cuts and interest rate reductions - to inject new life into the world economy.
But with the United States currently in the transition period from one president to the next, there are doubts on how much this summit can actually achieve.
Mr Bush's successor-elect Barack Obama will not be present, although he is sending former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and ex-congressman Jim Leach to Washington to establish informal contacts outside the main gathering.
With the financial crisis leading to calls for greater government intervention - particularly from Europe - Mr Bush has issued a warning that there is no need to "reinvent" the free market.
Mr Brown hopes to use the international kudos he gained through his leadership of the bank bail-out to win support for his wider economic measures.
"Countries should be involved, if possible, in a co-ordinated fiscal and monetary stimulus," he told the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank in New York on Friday before heading on to Washington. "Then the benefits of the stimulus don't leak."
Mr Brown has said that he will push for a re-opening of world trade talks, which collapsed last July in Geneva, arguing that an agreement on a world trade deal would be another major boost to economic activity.
The leaders will also discuss the issue of reform of the international financial system in the wake of the catastrophic banking collapse which triggered the current economic crisis.
