Group Of Seven

Finance ministers from the Group of 7 industrial countries on Sunday urged the world's largest petroleum producers to pump more oil to reduce risks to global growth, British finance minister Gordon Brown said.

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and other rich-nation finance ministers attempted a delicate international balancing act Saturday, addressing European concerns about the euro's rise against the weak U.S. dollar while doing little that would halt the greenback's export-fueling, job-creating slide in this election year.

Finance ministers from the Group of 7 industrial powers met in Paris, putting a brave face on falling growth rates and the threat of an oil price surge in the event of a war in Iraq. European Central Bank chief Wim Duisenberg appeared to promise an interest-rate cut if the economy weakens further. "We will not hesitate to act," he said at the meeting of the United States, Japan, Germany, Italy, Britain, France and Canada.

Leaders of the world's biggest economies pledged Saturday to take further steps if needed to head off a global recession and promised to intensify their efforts to cut off the flow of funds to terrorists. Representatives of the Group of Seven nations--the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy--declared their determination to keep the Sept. 11 attacks from crippling the world economy.

Finance ministers from the world's most prosperous nations will gather in Rome on Saturday, hoping for a brighter economic future but still battling a persistent global slowdown. U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and his counterparts from the other Group of Seven industrial nations--Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan--face a potentially grimmer situation than when they last met 10 weeks ago in Washington.

With economic troubles spreading through the three biggest English-speaking countries, finance officials from the United States and other industrial powers pledged Saturday to be "vigilant" in promoting expansion. "We all agreed that growth in all our economies is crucial to global prosperity," Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill told reporters after the meeting.

The masters of the world economy declared a "state of business as usual" over the weekend, despite an air of emergency fueled by further cuts in growth forecasts and confusing signals from a new U.S. Treasury team. Finance leaders from the Group of 7 club of wealthiest nations ended talks here late Saturday, fending off speculation that the United States' "strong dollar" policy might come to an end and putting a brave face on the wider risks from a sudden, sharp slowdown in the U.S. economy.

Oil-consuming nations are expected to join forces to persuade OPEC to open the taps further, fearing prices near 10-year highs could hurt economic growth and shaken by Europe-wide fuel protests by truckers and farmers. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said that the Group of 7 industrial nations would tackle oil prices at its summit in Prague this weekend.

The finance ministers of the world's richest nations, meeting here Saturday, said the global economic outlook is good but the wide divergence in regional performances remains a worry. "We see improved prospects for noninflationary growth in the major industrial economies and the world economy as a whole," the Group of 7 nations said in a communique. "The challenge remains to secure a more balanced pattern of growth among our economies."

The Group of 7 finance ministers, long used to a diet of Asian crisis, Latin meltdown and Russian chaos, are facing a much different problem at their Tokyo meeting today: what to do with a U.S. economy and stock market that won't say uncle. It's not that the world's top financiers have anything against success. Rather, they fear that the economic health of the globe may be far too dependent on a handful of overvalued U.S. dot-com stocks.