Global leaders have decided to come together to seek a way out of the current financial crisis affecting countries around the world. To that effect, US President George W Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Barroso met at Camp David on Saturday, after which they issued a joint statement asserting they would continue pressing for coordination to address ''the challenges facing the global economy.''

Bush underlined the rationale behind the meeting. Although he agreed that ''the first task is to stabilise the financial markets in our own countries,'' he explained that since ''the world has never been more interconnected, it is essential that we work together because we're in this crisis together.''

The tentative plan is for the US to host a meeting soon after the elections "to review progress being made to address the current crisis and to seek agreement on principles of reform needed to avoid a repetition and assure global prosperity in the future." After the initial summit planned for November, later meetings ''would be designed to implement agreement on specific steps to be taken to meet those principles.''

European proposals so far have included, from Sarkozy, rating agency reform, and from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, multi-country supervision of top financial institutions. Brown has said each of the world's top 30 banks should be under the supervision of a panel of regulators from the countries where those institutions do business.

European leaders have pressed for an emergency meeting of the world's richest nations, known as the Group of Eight (G-8), joined by others such as India and China, to overhaul the world's financial regulatory systems. The meetings are to include developed economies as well as developing nations.

Before the meeting, Sarkozy warned the world could not "continue to run the economy of the 21st Century with instruments of the economy of the 20th Century". He and Barraso are pressing Bush for a G-8 agenda that includes stiffer regulation and supervision for cross-border banks, a global ''early warning'' system and an overhaul of the International Monetary Fund. Talks may also encompass tougher regulations on hedge funds, new rules for credit-rating companies, limits on executive pay and changing the treatment of tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Monaco.

Most of the world's criticism has been directed at the US for not preventing the sub-prime crisis and the usage of leverage employed by top Wall Street institutions. "Since the crisis started in New York, maybe we can find the solution in New York," Sarkozy said in his own statement.

Details of the summits are still to be worked out, but White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the first was likely to be held in November.  He added that Sarkozy had recommended New York as a location. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has proposed using the organisation's headquarters there as a venue.