Brown, Köhler stress need for global cooperation

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Page 365

Following are edited excerpts from the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) press conference by Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom's Chancellor of the Exchequer, and IMF Managing Director Horst Köhler, in Ottawa on November 17.

BROWN: Our meeting today has taken place at a testing and challenging time for the global economy. It would have been understandable at a time like this for each country to have turned inward and focused on its domestic concerns. But I believe today's meeting has reaffirmed the importance of global cooperation.

Indeed, it has reflected the fact that the global slowdown requires and demands global cooperation. The alliance that we have formed against terrorism has been boosted today by the decisions of the IMFC to declare its support for the special recommendations on combating the financing of terrorism.We are calling on all countries to take action to ensure that financial institutions are able to report suspicious transactions, and we are calling on all countries to ratify and implement the United Nations (UN) instruments to counter financial terrorism.

For the first time ever, the IMF has committed itself to extending its bilateral surveillance to include members' efforts to counter the financing of terrorism.We have agreed that all 183 countries should consider establishing financial intelligence units to analyze potentially suspicious transactions.We have agreed on the need to share information and ensure cooperation between national financial intelligence units, and we have agreed that the IMF should provide targeted, expert assistance-in some cases financial assistance- to ensure that every country can play its part and has the resources to do so in the fight against terrorist financing.We have called on the UN to create a technical register of countries and their needs in relation to tackling terrorist financing.We said all these things should be moved forward by the first of February, and we would want to report at our April meetings.

Our global cooperation has extended also to the decisions we have reached on the global economy and the need to strengthen international cooperation and our international financial institutions.

I want to draw your attention to the communiqué itself, to the statement that we have made about the world economy.We say that the outlook remains uncertain, and we say that continuing vigilance is needed.We say that bold policy action has already been taken to support a robust recovery during 2002, and we say that it is essential that the international community stand ready to take timely action to maintain stability and reinvigorate growth.We say that the monetary authorities stand ready to take further action if appropriate.We say also that, while the scope for discretionary fiscal policy action varies across countries, the advanced economies should allow automatic stabilizers to operate.We emphasize the importance of the agreements on trade at Doha being pushed forward to reinvigorate world economic growth.

We also agree on the need in the different continents for structural reforms to continue and, indeed, in some cases, to be stepped up so that we can have the increased productivity that is important for growth in the longer...

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