By DPA,
Marseille (France): French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the current holder of the European Union’s (EU) rotating presidency, Monday urged world leaders to hold emergency talks on the current financial crisis “within weeks” after talks with Indian leaders.
Sarkozy and the head of the EU’s executive, Jose Manuel Barroso, will take the initiative to gather in Paris in the next few days.
The four European members of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations (G8), the head of the European Central Bank and the chairman of the group of countries, which use the euro, will prepare the best conditions for holding a global summit, to be held in the coming weeks, Sarkozy said after talks with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
And at the summit, “the economic powers of today and tomorrow should join together to lay the foundations of a new international finance system”, he said.
While Sarkozy did not specify who exactly should be invited to the global summit, he has previously called for a reform of the G8 to include India, China, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, making it likely that those countries would be among the invitees.
“India also risks getting hit by the crisis at some stage,” which has already swept across the US and at the weekend sparked chaos and government interventions among banks in Belgium, Britain, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, he said.
Sarkozy praised the interventions, saying that “we must support our banks”, but stressed that the financial markets were facing structural problems, and therefore required restructuring.
Singh did not comment directly on the proposal for a summit, which Sarkozy originally made in a speech to the UN Tuesday.