World leaders agree on new financial rules

PENNSYLVANIA: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday world leaders are close to agreeing new financial rules, including at the International Monetary Fund, where Moscow wants more clout.

"Many positions relating to the future layout of the international financial system ... have been practically agreed upon," Medvedev said.

Medvedev, who is attending the Group of 20 summit of the world's leading developed and emerging economies hosted by US leader Barack Obama, spoke to students at the University of Pittsburgh.

Russia wants more power within the International Monetary Fund and said in May it would buy up to 10 billion dollars' worth of its bonds to help boost the institution's resources.

Earlier this year, the Kremlin published a raft of proposals to overhaul the global economic order, including plans for a supra-national currency. China has come forward with similar ideas.

Medvedev told students he was skeptical that the summit would come up with any "universal recipes" but said the two previous G20 summits in Washington in November and in London in April had brought some tangible results.

"On the whole what has been proposed in Washington and what has subsequently been proposed in London is working," he said.

"Of course, it's not a 100 percent solution, not some kind of magic measure that pulled this or that economy out of the crisis but I believe it's a systematic set of things."

Medvedev said that he hoped the world would now be able to foresee and prevent future economic crisis, in a speech at the university's Cathedral of Learning, one of Pittsburgh's main landmarks. PITTSBURGH, Friday, AFP