Summit fulfills broad goals

Washington —- World leaders vowed Saturday to cooperate more closely on the global economic crisis, keep a sharper eye out for red-flag problems and give bigger roles to fast-rising nations. But they also kicked many hard details down the road for the next summit after Barack Obama takes office.

Perhaps as important as the modest concrete steps they took, the leaders of the planet’s industrial and developing powers made clear their recognition of the world’s increasingly interconnected financial architecture and the responsibilities that go with it.

Underscoring how bad things have gotten, President Bush said he had agreed to the recent $700 billion rescue plan for U.S. financial institutions only after being told the nation was at risk of falling into “a depression greater than the Great Depression.”

Leaders from 21 nations and four international organizations released a joint communique modest in scope but high in hopes.

The document’s focus is to establish a series of safeguards for the fragile and opaque global financial system. Nearly all the efforts are aimed in some way at better flagging risky investment patterns and regulatory weak spots before they bring down companies and then ripple dangerously through entire economies, as has happened in recent months.

None of the items was splashy, and most would be understandable to few outside of financial experts. But officials argued they have far-reaching potential.

More than two dozen items were slated for some level of action by the end of March, around the time the leaders expect to gather again, with the rest left for later. Concrete proposals were few, however, with most details slated to be worked out by finance ministers in the coming months.

The leaders also discussed the shorter-term problem of how to bring their nations’ economies back from the brink. Some had pushed ahead of time for a pledge of coordinated new government stimulus spending by each nation.

But with Bush cool to such action in the U.S., the communique only endorsed taking such action “as appropriate.”

With fears high that signs of discord among the world’s most powerful politicians could send markets plunging again come Monday, the presidents and prime ministers appeared uncharacteristically determined to hold their tongues about any disagreement over either the cause of the current crisis or their compromise agreement.

This despite the fact that the action plan seemed to lean in most areas far more toward the U.S. preference for boosting oversight and free-market incentives than the European desire for increased regulation and requirements.

Bush is on his way out of office, and the leaders were clearly looking beyond him to his successor. Still, Bush made sure he kept an iron grip on the proceedings. His was the only voice heard in any official setting —- during the toast at Friday’s dinner and before and after the closed summit meetings.

WHAT THEY SAID

“There shall be no blind spots. There is here a great common will to ensure that such a crisis is not repeated.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

“It does make an impression sitting around the room and listening to how scared the other leaders of the other countries are and how grim their prospects are.”

Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff

“We share a determination to fix the problems that led to this turmoil.”

President Bush

“Emerging market countries were not the cause of this crisis, but they are amongst its worst affected victims.”

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

G20 MEMBERS

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union.