The world's financial policymakers will try to bridge a cross-Atlantic chasm over the Iraq war and stir growth in the shaken global economy at meetings in the US capital April 12 through April 13.
The world economy, dazed by the bursting of a late-1990s technology-driven bubble and then stunned by the war in Iraq, appeared set for fragile growth in the first half of this year, analysts said.
The weekend's gatherings here, they said, would provide the chance to show a united front, instilling some confidence.
Finance ministers and central bankers of the G7 industrialized powers -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US -- arrive Friday before formal talks Saturday morning.
They then join policymakers of the 184-nation IMF and World Bank for discussions over the rest of the weekend.
"In case of a long war, we cannot exclude a world recession," IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler told Germany's WirtschaftsWoche newspaper last month.
He stuck by a forecast of 3 percent growth this year.
"The industrialized world had slowed to stall speed in the final months of 2002, long before war-related jitters took hold," said Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach.
"As bad luck would have it, several shocks have now hit -- war, geopolitical uncertainties and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) -- that could push a stalling world into outright recession."
Roach, defining a recession as world growth below 2.5 percent, forecast global growth of 2.4 percent this year.
Banking and investment titans, represented by the Institute of International Finance (IIF), pressed the G7, IMF and World Bank to act together.
"Intensified macroeconomic policy cooperation among the G7 is essential, as is action by individual country authorities to restore confidence, reinvigorate growth and dampen financial market volatility," IIF Managing Director Charles Dallara said in a letter this month.
Michael Mussa, former IMF chief economist and now a scholar at the Washington-based Institute for International Economics, said world output was likely to remain sluggish in the first half of this year before accelerating late this year and next year.
The world economy would grow 3.25 percent this year when comparing the final three months of the year to the fourth quarter of last year, Mussa said. It would then pick up to 4 percent next year, he said.
Industrialized nations' growth would ease from 2.5 percent last year to 2 percent this year before rising to 3 percent next year. Developing and transition economies would accelerate from 4 percent growth last year to 4.5 percent this year and 5.25 percent next year.
The most likely scenario ahead was a rapid removal of the Iraqi regime with no lasting damage to its economic infrastructure, Mussa said, leading to a bounce-back in consumer and market confidence and a slide in world oil prices.
"The contribution that the finance ministers and central bank governors can make is to emphasize that they are continuing discussions and cooperation," Mussa said.
There was little need for the G7 to respond immediately to any financial crisis or to manage exchange rates, said Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics.
A more important meeting, he said, would be the June 1 trhough June 3 G8 summit in Evian-les-Bains, France.
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