Leaders of the world's biggest economies sought yesterday to settle their remaining differences over an emergency plan to blunt the bite of the worst financial crisis in decades.
Presidents and prime ministers from the powers of the 20th century joined the heads of new economic heavyweights such as export colossus China and oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
They sat down with their finance ministers for a five-hour meeting in a Washington museum, gathered around a large map of the world symbolising the global nature of their attempted economic rescue plan.
Signs are mounting of a painful economic slump in many regions, with the eurozone slipping into recession according to data last week, unemployment climbing in the US and elsewhere and emerging economies slowing.
As the meeting got under way, the International Monetary Fund agreed to a loan worth at least $7.6 billion as part of a bigger plan for Pakistan where foreign currency reserves have dwindled and the risk of a default on its debts has grown.
With US President George W. Bush only two months away from leaving the White House and his successor Barack Obama choosing to stay away from the Washington summit, talk of a top-to-bottom overhaul of global finance has been tempered.
But leaders said they were close to agreeing on the need for changes including more regulation for the financial sector, where huge risk-taking on house prices, especially in the United States, backfired last year and triggered the downturn.
Bush, who opposes calls from some countries for sweeping new regulations in the financial industry, said summit leaders were looking for "a way forward to make sure that such a crisis is unlikely to occur again."
"I am pleased that the leaders reaffirmed the principles behind open markets and free trade," he told reporters before the talks. "One of the dangers during a crisis such as this is that people will start implementing protectionist policies."
"This crisis has not ended. There's some progress being made but there's still a lot more work to be done."
Yesterday's meeting is expected to pave the way for more work in the coming months and another summit in the early months of 2009 when a newly installed President Obama could consider potentially far-reaching changes to the financial system. As well as new regulation, leaders are considering ways to open up global institutions such as the IMF to emerging economies whose export-funded reserve cash piles have made them important economic players.
The leaders are also likely to spell out what kind of measures their countries intend to take to counter the economic downturn, such as more public spending.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said expectations of low inflation created room for lower interest rates and fiscal stimulus measures.
"These are tough talks because countries are coming from very different positions and we have to bring them together," Brown told reporters before heading to the talks.
"It's obviously important to move people to decisions today about what can be done." He has been urging the G20 group of leading developed and developing economies to act together to stimulate economic activity via fiscal and monetary policy means.
After leaders met for dinner Friday, their finance officials worked late into the night on a summit communique to be put to the leaders yesterday.