President Obama started his day at the G20 Summit by meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street. The President and Prime Minister Brown will host a news conference later in the day.
IN THE FIELD: US President Barack Obama urged G20 countries meeting on Thursday to focus on common ground to resolve the global financial crisis. This comes as British PM Gordon Brown warned that the summit would entail tough negotiations.
Speaking in a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Barack Obama said Russia and the United States have "a broad set of common interests."
IN THE PAPERS: the French president Sarkozy has threatened to walk out on the G20 if the US refuses a deal to tighten global regulation. The Russian president Medvedev calls for the introduction of a world superanational reserve currency to replace the dollar. Obama and Brown call for united actions.
The first ever eye-to-eye meeting between Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama has shown there are signs of thawing in Russia-US relations, and that the two states are ready to push the reset button
Peter Cook of Bloomberg News with the update as President Obama is set to take press questions today.
CBS News Foreign Affairs Analyst Pamela Falk on competing interests at the G20 Summit
"In his first full day in Europe, President Obama conceded Wednesday that the United States had “some accounting to do” for failures that led to the world’s financial crisis, even as he tried to brush past heavy pressure from Germany and France to accept global financial regulations that could reach well inside American borders."
"Speaking on the eve of a summit meeting here to address the financial crisis, Mr. Obama acknowledged that regulatory failures in the United States had a role in the meltdown, but he urged world leaders to focus on solutions rather than on placing blame. He also cautioned that the United States was unlikely to return to its role as a “voracious consumer market,” and he urged other nations to do more to revive growth in their home markets."
"Despite calls for unity from Mr. Obama and the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, the host of the Group of 20 meeting that will formally begin Thursday, a rift intensified over Anglo-American calls for greater fiscal stimulus spending and French and German demands for more intrusive global regulation of financial institutions."
"While President Nicolas Sarkozy of France did not repeat an earlier threat to walk out of the conference — “I just got here,” he joked — he made it clear he would reject an agreement that puts off stringent new regulations on banks, tax havens, and hedge funds."
“The decisions need to be taken now, today and tomorrow,” he said. “This has nothing to do with ego. This has nothing to do with temper tantrums. When it comes to historic moments, you can’t circumvent them.”
"Mr. Sarkozy added that tougher regulation — he has called for a “global regulator” that would be able to reach inside the borders of the United States and other large nations to deal with international financial firms — is “nonnegotiable.”
“The compromise has to come from all countries around the world,” he said. Saying he trusted Mr. Obama, Mr. Sarkozy said he did not want to point fingers about the crisis. But then, in a verbal jab he has used before, he added, “The crisis didn’t actually spontaneously erupt in Europe.”
"Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany rejected Mr. Obama’s plea for other nations to follow America’s lead and pledge greater fiscal spending to stimulate their economies. She said more spending was not worth debating. “That is not a bargaining chip,” she said, adding, by contrast, “Regulation is something that is in everyone’s interest.”
"By the time Mr. Obama ended his evening at Buckingham Palace and a working dinner for the leaders assembling here — representing a group as diverse as the established European powers and Japan to Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands — it appeared likely that countries would divide into two or three camps."
"The United States, Britain and Japan will push for more immediate stimulus and “systemic risk” regulators that mostly operate within national borders; Germany and France will push the opposite position, probably with some support from the Czech Republic."
"That leaves China and Russia, among others, to exploit the division to play a significant role, though if tradition holds the major differences are likely to be smoothed out in wording in a final communique that each country interprets differently."
"Mr. Obama and Mr. Brown used a joint news conference earlier in the day to emphasize that differences with France and Germany were “vastly overstated.”
"Mr. Brown argued that the world had learned the hard lessons of a similar summit meeting here in 1933, which ended in failure. That outcome will not be repeated, Mr. Brown argued."
"Mr. Obama also met for the first time with President Hu Jintao of China, the nation that is essentially being asked to bankroll much of the upward of $2 trillion in deficits the United States will run up this year to finance its recovery package, bailouts for Wall Street and Detroit, and two wars."
"But in a meeting that American officials described as “businesslike” Mr. Hu apparently said nothing about previous Chinese cautions that the country would have to be convinced that the United States had a long-term plan to bring down its deficits before it invested more heavily in American securities."
"In essence, the United States is pressing Europe and other nations to spend more now — when a coordinated stimulus could do the most good. But over the long term, Mr. Obama appeared to be preparing the world for a reshaped global economy in which the United States no longer was the ultimate export market for the world’s established and emerging powers."
"Speaking alongside Mr. Brown after the two men met, Mr. Obama warned against returning the United States to the habits of the past decade, and the twin trade and budget deficits they created."
“The United States will do its share,” he said, “but I think that one of the things that Gordon and I spoke about is the fact that in some ways the world has become accustomed to the United States being a voracious consumer market and the engine that drives a lot of economic growth worldwide. And I think that in the wake of this crisis, even as we’re doing stimulus, we have to take into account our own deficits.”
"He said he and fellow leaders had an “enormous consensus” on the need to take bold steps to revive growth, and urged them to focus on what they can achieve at home. “If there is going to be renewed growth it can’t just be the United States as the engine, everybody is going to have to pick up the pace,” he said.
"But Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy laid out a different argument: that the United States had only now begun to understand the cost of poorly regulated free-market capitalism, and must now bow to the European model. “The foundation for this new financial architecture must be laid now,” Mrs. Merkel said. “That is why we seem to be so tough.”
"The German chancellor, who is scheduled to met Mr. Obama one-on-one this weekend, rejected attempts to link the American and British demands for fiscal stimulus programs to the French and German agenda on regulations. Although Germany did carry out a reasonably large stimulus package this year, it has not agreed to one for 2010."
"Mr. Sarkozy said France had made a gesture to the United States by rejoining the command structure of the NATO alliance, and he implied that the United States needed to make a similar gesture in the regulatory arena."
Helene Cooper reported from London and Alan Cowell from Paris. Matthew Saltmarsh contributed reporting from Paris and Julia Werdigier and Mark Landler from London.
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