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Brussels: EU finance ministers told France on Tuesday that it was going too fast, too soon with plans to push for concrete global financial reforms at a Washington summit next week.
France is trying to create a consensus within the EU to push a finance summit in Washington on November 15-16 to adopt stricter financial regulation.
But diplomats present at the EU ministers' talks said there was no support for an ambitious push for global financial regulation when the crisis may not yet have peaked.
Governments "need to put out the fire first," said a diplomat who declined to be named because he is not authorised to talk to the press.
Despite other countries' reservations, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said there was "massive support" in general from EU nations for more worldwide financial supervision and for boosting the powers of the International Monetary Fund in containing the financial turmoil.
"At the moment clearly there is urgency and there is a demand that we move ahead," she said.
The crisis of confidence in the banking sector has hiked the cost of borrowing, sent shares plummeting and caused massive swings in currencies in recent weeks.
The European stance may lower expectations for the Washington G-20 summit, the first talks between major economies on reforming the global financial system.
It takes place a week after the election of a new US president and may only kick off a series of global summits on the crisis instead of tackling sweeping measures.
The G-20 includes the G-7 industrialised democracies and emerging economic powers such as Brazil, India, Russia and China.
Lagarde said Europe was keen to get other parts of the world on board to seal off loopholes that allow some nations to shun regulation and help financial players evade strict supervision.
"We need to work hard and proceed on as global a basis as possible to eliminate this risk," she said.
"We should not overregulate, not overshoot but clearly we also want to make sure that we do not leave loopholes or dark holes in the regulations where either products, players or territories would be left completely without such regulation," she told reporters.
In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hoped the meeting would secure support from leaders to negotiate "a new financial constitution in which we demand more transparency" over the next few months.
EU nations agree that the International Monetary Fund should be strengthened and would like more coordination between financial supervisors across the world - but want more time to discuss how that should be done.
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