British PM calls on US to reject protectionism

[TheLancinator]

British PM calls on US to reject protectionism
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer


LONDON – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown urged the United States on Monday to avoid any moves toward protectionism in response to the world financial crisis, but said London will be Washington's closest ally in dealing with the slowdown.

Brown, who joins fellow leaders of the Group of 20 world economies at a summit in Washington on Saturday, said in a speech that U.S. President-elect Barack Obama can lead radical reforms of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other global institutions.

"As America stands at its own dawn of hope, so let that hope be fulfilled through a pact with the wider world to lead and shape the 21st century as the century of a truly global society," Brown said.

"The alliance between Britain and America — and more broadly between Europe and America — can and must provide leadership," Brown added.

In the annual foreign policy speech to London's Lord Mayor's banquet, Brown also called for better burden sharing in Afghanistan, a renewed push on Middle East peace and said Britain is ready to fundamentally change its role in Iraq.

But Brown focused on the financial crisis and said current events should be a catalyst for major changes to the world's financial and political systems.

"Historians will look back and say this was no ordinary time, but a defining moment. An unprecedented period of global change, a time when one chapter ended and another began — for nations, for continents, for the whole world," he said.

Brown claimed that the Group of Eight bloc of industrialized nations is no longer adequate to debate the world's problems. "The time when just a few powers could sit around the table and set the global agenda is over," Brown said.

In recent talks with China and the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, Brown has said they should be given a greater role in world institutions.

Brown said that despite current woes, the future for industrialized economies is bright. "In the next two decades the world economy will double in size," he said, claiming that current turmoil may in future be seen as the "birth pangs of a new global order."

Brown warned that any move by individual nations to restrict free trade to protect domestic jobs could undermine global cooperation. Britain's business secretary Peter Mandelson last week urged Obama to reject perceived protectionist instincts within the U.S. Democratic Party.

The U.S. and others should reject a "beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism that has been a feature in transforming past crises into deep recessions," Brown said.

"My message is that we must be internationalist not protectionist," he said.

Brown's spokesman Michael Ellam said Monday that Brown currently has no scheduled meeting with Obama during a three-day visit to the U.S. beginning Thursday.

The British leader said the world faces five major challenges — to promote democracy, fight terrorism, strengthen the global economy, tackle climate change and resolve conflict.

He called for a new impetus to bring a final resolution to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. "The failure to restore a Palestinian state is a festering wound that has for generations poisoned relations between the West and the Arab and Islamic world," Brown said.