«President Barack Obama had more success with former Cold War combatants than with some European allies as the Group of 20 summit of world leaders began, starting new talks on arms and trade with Russia and China but facing a challenge from France and Germany over economic leadership.
Mr. Obama began by conceding U.S. culpability in starting the global financial crisis, but also called on Europe and others to do more to end it, in an opening news conference with the summit host, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel answered just hours later with a combative appearance of their own, demanding fast and strict international regulation of the world financial system; Mr. Sarkozy called it "nonnegotiable."
They warned against an empty conclusion of the conference despite many disputes over its direction. Chief among them are French and German calls for fast and far-reaching financial regulation, while the U.S. has stressed stimulus plans and argued for a lighter regulatory approach to some parts of the financial world, particularly hedge funds.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel appear together on Wednesday in London, after a joint news conference.
"We do not want results that have no impact in practice," said Ms. Merkel. "Germany and France will speak with one and the same voice," Mr. Sarkozy added, citing an on-and-off political alliance that has previously pitted the two countries against the U.S. or the U.K. over Europe's direction. "As the chancellor rightly said, we demand results," he said. "Regulation is not simply a word, an empty word... It is a major objective."
Of the U.S. president, he said, "Mr. Obama was elected on change. We trust him. But we're talking about today and tomorrow....After tomorrow will be too late."
The summit of 20 industrial and developing nations is still expected to produce some substantive accords. Mr. Brown said participants will pledge $100 billion "at an absolute minimum" to finance international trade, which has dropped off precipitously. On economic stimulus, members will pledge to do whatever is necessary, though without setting targets the U.S. has sought and already been forced to abandon amid European resistance.
A communiqué will lay out broad principles to remake the global financial regulatory system and rein in tax havens, with the International Monetary Fund -- whose lending powers would be expanded -- and a strengthened Financial Stability Forum empowered to police them. The communiqué also will include the establishment of so-called regulatory colleges to help coordinate supervision of the world's biggest banks, and strong language against protectionism. There also is likely to be language on principles to guide banks on how they calculate staff bonuses.
The French and German leaders seemed resolute that divisions among the players would not be papered over. Both -- like Mr. Obama and Mr. Brown -- also are seeking roles as international leaders to help their political status in presiding over troubled economies at home.
Mr. Brown has pushed a new Bretton Woods-type system of global financial oversight, while Mr. Obama has stressed the importance of a spending boost alongside stronger rules to protect the financial system from abuse. French and German officials have made a point of stressing the role of lightly regulated U.S. financial institutions in spurring a problem that then enveloped Europe, a point Mr. Sarkozy repeated yesterday.
"Compromise has to be engaged in by all parts of the world, all regions of the world," he said, adding pointedly: "The crisis didn't actually spontaneously erupt in Europe, did it?"
Hoping to disarm G-20 members looking for someone to blame, Mr. Obama accepted some American responsibility. "If you look at the source of this crisis, the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to a regulatory system that was inadequate," he said during the joint news conference with Mr. Brown.
Yet he warned that the world can't rely on the U.S. to drive global growth. "It can't just be the United States as the engine, everybody is going to have to pick up the pace," he said.
After Mr. Obama's meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the two pledged a "reset" of recently contentious relations, promising to produce a new arms-reduction treaty and pursue a "nuclear-free world."
In Mr. Obama's meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, the leaders agreed to create a new "U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue," going beyond the twice-yearly forum during the Bush administration. The effort will add security and other issues, according to people familiar with the matter. The White House said it would be led on the U.S. side by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Michelle Obama meets Queen Elizabeth II during an audience at Buckingham Palace.
The meeting with Mr. Hu was described as businesslike by senior White House officials, who said the main hot-button issue -- Beijing's suggestion that a new global currency replace the dollar -- didn't come up. Mr. Hu invited Mr. Obama to China, a visit the U.S. president set for the latter half of the year.
More contentious was the renewed French-German alliance that continued to bedevil calls for G-20 unity. Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel warned the G-20 meeting won't do enough to solve the world's financial problems. "We sometimes like to sweep things under the carpet -- not actually tackling matters at the root cause," Ms. Merkel said.
Both leaders called for establishing a new regulatory structure that would mean tougher rules for banks and hedge funds. In their minds, Mr. Sarkozy said, the G-20 meeting in November in Washington established principles. The London summit, the French president said, needed to yield concrete plans. Stimulus attempts are a good way to restart the global economy, he said, but regulation has to be improved.
Credit-ratings agencies were one target. Mr. Sarkozy expressed disdain for the fact that securities rated triple-A can fall to triple-B in a short period of time. The leaders' comments were broad, but Mr. Sarkozy offered one specific goal: that banks retain some of the loans that they bundle into securities and sell to investors in a process known as securitization. "We want traceability," Mr. Sarkozy, adding: "A bank that engages in securitization should keep on its balance sheet a part of what it has securitized."
Despite the posturing, White House officials suggested the two sides weren't far apart on key issues. One senior administration official said the French are in line with the U.S. position on tax havens. Mr. Obama spoke specifically of new regulations coming for financial firms, derivatives markets and off-balance-sheet vehicles, and in producing language that will reject protectionism and put forward the agendas of emerging markets.
Changes in the U.S. financial infrastructure could take time wending through Congress, however. Changing the way the ratings agencies review complex securities could face an especially lengthy overview.
White House officials emphasized that the president was striving for substance, not theater. "We don't do drive-by summits," a senior administration official said.
But pomp played its part, especially as Mr. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama had an audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. The Obamas presented the queen with an iPod loaded with footage of her last visit to the U.S. and gave her a rare song book autographed by American composer Richard Rodgers.
That continued a multimedia theme started this winter when the president presented Mr. Brown with a set of DVDs, a gift deemed insufficient by the British press. The queen gave the Obamas a framed photograph of herself and the Duke of Edinburgh.»
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