IST, AGENCIES

BRUSSELS: EU leaders were to wrap up a summit Thursday dominated by the financial crisis with a call for an overhaul of the global financial archi
tecture to avert a repeat of the current turmoil.

Following intense discussions on the first day of the two-day summit, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said it was "essential" for the EU, the United States and other countries to work "hand in hand."

"Europe is indispensable for a global response but a European response alone is not enough," Barroso said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said there was unanimous support for a global summit to be held before the end of the year, including industrialised countries and also major emerging economies like China and India, devoted to a complete overhaul of the financial system.

Sarkozy was hoping that all 27 countries would sign up to a joint declaration on how to tackle the crisis as well as an endorsement of measures already taken by the 15 countries in the single currency eurozone.

"Europe will present an ambitious common vision. We do not want (the crisis) to start again. We want that consequences are drawn from what we know. We are really determined to go all the way on this overhaul," Sarkozy said.

Announcing that all 27 of the EU's leaders were behind measures taken by members of the single currency eurozone to safeguard banks, Sarkozy -- whose country holds the EU presidency -- said he would deliver the EU's message to US President George W. Bush when the pair hold talks at Camp David this weekend.

The comments came as stocks around the world tumbled again on growing signs in Europe and the United States that the financial crisis had spread beyond the banks to infect the broader economy.

The financial crisis dominated an EU summit originally meant to nail down the outlines of an agreement on tackling climate change and to discuss the way forward after the Irish rejection of the bloc's reforming Lisbon Treaty.

Cracks were appearing on the climate change front -- a deal is meant to be sewn up by the end of the year -- with Italy and eastern European countries grumbling that it was too expensive, poorly timed and badly conceived.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday that he intended to veto the action plan -- targeting a 20 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2020 from 1990 levels -- saying Italian firms were "in absolutely no position at the moment to absorb the costs of the regulations that have been proposed."

Sarkozy on Wednesday acknowledged that there were objections and that "perhaps we haven't done that enough." But he added that a deal "must" be struck.