G-7 Wants Deal On Financial Services By Year-End

Group of Seven leaders on Saturday called for completion of international talks on financial services liberalisation by the end of this year.

'We believe that it will be in the interests of all World Trade Organization (WTO) members to secure a financial services agreement by the end of this year,' the G7 said in an economic statement on the second day of its summit here.

But the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US said that some countries need to significantly beef up their plans to open up their financial markets if the talks are to be brought to a successful end.

'We're going to have to have offers from a number of countries substantially better than the offers that were available last year,' US treasury secretary Robert Rubin told reporters.

Some developing countries have been reluctant to open up and liberalise their financial markets out of fear of that would leave their economies subject to the mercy of at times fickle capital flows. Disputes over global warming, however, heated up the summit as European states put heavy pressure on the US to call for sharp cuts in greenhouse gases.

Europeans in the exclusive rich nations' club, preparing for a UN Earth Summit on Monday, criticised the US for resisting their call for a 15 per cent worldwide cut by 2010 in the carbon emissions that lead to global warming.

Canada and the Japan also came under fire, but French President Jacques Chirac made clear who the main target was.

'There is a real divergence of views between, on one hand the Europeans and on the other the Americans