British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed yesterday turning the International Monetary Fund into an independent watchdog that would form the heart of a global early warning system against financial turbulence.

In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Brown also said he supported India's bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat, and called for creation of rapid response teams of police and experts which could move quickly to restore order and begin rebuilding after conflicts.

Mr Brown called for the creation of a multi-billion-dollar global climate change fund within the World Bank to finance environmentally sustainable development in the poorest countries. Mr Brown believes the rapid spread of the credit crisis last year after problems with US sub-prime mortgages points to failings in global financial supervision which must be fixed.

"I propose that the IMF should act with the same kind of independence as a central bank in a national country," he told business groups in New Delhi. "It should make its focus the surveillance of the global economic and financial system. Its role should be to prevent crises and not simply to manage or resolve them as in the past," said Brown, nearing the end of a four-day trip to China and India.

"The IMF, working with the global Financial Stability Forum, should be at the heart of ... an early warning system, involving regulators and supervisors in all countries, for financial turbulence affecting the global economy," he added. The Financial Stability Forum groups central banks, regulators and international bodies.

He said the IMF should develop a financial instrument to insure "well-managed economies against sudden reversals of capital flows" but gave no details. The credit crunch claimed a high-profile casualty in Britain when mortgage lender Northern Rock suffered the country's first bank run in more than a century last year.