Top financial leaders ended their weekend meetings by promising action to prevent plunging stock markets from derailing the global economy's fragile recovery and vowed to draw up a plan to help bankrupt nations by April.
The leaders completed their meetings without major protests in the streets or disagreements in the meeting hall.
The head of the IMF, Horst Koehler, said the agreement to advance the bankruptcy proposal was a major achievement for this year's meetings of the 184-nation IMF and its sister lending institution, the World Bank.
"This is a kind of breakthrough ... There is a recognition that there is a gap in the international financial architecture," Koehler told a concluding news conference.
Delegates at the final session Sunday approved a recommendation that the IMF develop in six months measures that would allow nations in financial crises to essentially declare bankruptcy and force creditors to negotiate more lenient repayment terms.
The idea already has generated stiff opposition from international banks, which want to be repaid in full on the billions of dollars they have loaned developing countries and some emerging market countries don't like the proposal because they fear it will increase the cost of loans.
During the weekend meetings, the financial leaders voiced a mixture of concern and optimism over some of the world's most troubling economic problems -- crises in Argentina, Brazil and Japan.
Threats to shut down the US capital and disrupt the IMF-World Bank meetings went unfulfilled Sunday as three days of demonstrations wrapped up much the way they started -- with smaller-than-expected, peaceful gatherings.
Finance officials conceded that their job of promoting prosperity was being made harder by the sluggish global economy. This year's recovery has been weaker than expected because of continued stock market plunges in the US and many other nations.
Argentina was forced into a record default on government debt last December and Brazil has seen its currency plunge to record lows in the past week over rising investor fears that Latin America's largest economy will soon default on its debt in spite of a record US$30 billion loan approved by the IMF in early September.
Billionaire investor George Soros said Sunday in an interview on ABC that IMF officials were ``asleep at the switch'' and doing too little to avert a debt default that could he said could have serious repercussions on American banks with loans to Brazil and American companies with plants in the country.
Finance officials, in a string of speeches during the final day of discussions, struck a more positive tone, declaring that the US, Europe and Japan had all committed during the weekend meetings to attack structural problems in their individual countries that were holding back growth.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said "the United States is doing its part" to promote a global recovery and he expected the US would soon return to solid growth.
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