WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush on Tuesday discussed the global economic meltdown with leaders of Britain, France and Italy, seeking consensus ahead of weekend crisis talks, the White House said.
With finance ministers from the Group of Seven rich democracies due to meet in Washington on Friday, "it's critical that everybody gets on the same page" on how to tackle the problem, said spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Bush spoke to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and was due to reach out to German Chancellor Angela Merkel soon, but "not today," said Perino.
Asked whether Bush backed Sarkozy's called for an urgent meeting of leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized countries, Perino said "the president is open to that" but that his "immediate focus" is on the G7 meeting.
The talks group finance ministers and central bank chiefs of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. Russia was also expected to take part in some capacity.
"We want to make sure that everyone is on the same page when they get there so that it can be an effective and efficient meeting," Perino told reporters.
"The president is discussing the various measures that the United States is taking to bring stability to the markets as well as the importance for all countries to work together to coordinate our actions on finding solutions to the problems that are facing all of us," the spokeswoman said.
The discussions came days after the US Congress passed -- and Bush signed -- emergency economic rescue legislation aimed at pumping up to 700 billion dollars to bail out troubled US banks and ease a credit squeeze.
Asked why stock markets still tumbled on Monday, Perino replied: "I think we need to give it a little bit of time."
"What you saw over the weekend was the increasing concern around the globe about our global financial system, and how it's interconnected, and that the pain is going to be spread outside of the United States," she said.
Asked whether the US economy was now in a recession, Perino replied: "I don't think that we know. Obviously, this next quarter's probably not going to be a very good one.
"Clearly, right now we are in a very distressing situation," said the spokeswoman, who noted that the classical definition of the term was two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
Her comments came as the United States opened up a major new front in the battle against financial turmoil, sucking up huge amounts of corporate debt as European governments staged new rescues and nationalizations.
The US Federal Reserve's move to absorb short term company debt perked up volatile stock markets as they took new blows with Iceland nationalizing another bank and Russia setting up a 36 billion dollar bank bailout.
Russia also agreed to negotiate a four-billion-euro (5.4 billion dollar) emergency loan to help Iceland's fight against national bankruptcy, while EU finance ministers increased a bank deposit guarantee ceiling from 30,000 euros to 50,000.
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