Brown to join crisis talks in Paris

5:10pm Saturday 11th October 2008

Gordon Brown will travel to Paris for crisis talks as EU leaders consider how to react to deepening global financial turmoil.

Amid signs that eurozone countries are moving towards a British-style rescue plan for banks, the Prime Minister will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy and other senior figures.

Mr Sarkozy has called an emergency summit of the 15 states signed up to the single currency - despite the fact that EU leaders are already due to gather in Brussels on Wednesday.

Earlier, US President George Bush warned that a "serious global response" was needed as financial markets around the world plunge.

Following meetings with G7 finance ministers - including Chancellor Alistair Darling - at the White House, Mr Bush strongly backed moves to buy stock in troubled financial institutions.

"In our interconnected world, no nation will gain by driving down the fortunes of another," he said. "We're in this together, we will come through it together."

He said he was "confident" that the world economy would overcome the "challenges" it faced.

"There have been moments of crisis in the past when powerful nations turned themselves against each other, started to wall themselves off from the world," he said. "This time is different."

Downing Street said Mr Brown was not currently scheduled to take part in the main talks between eurozone countries in Paris, but would be meeting Mr Sarkozy, EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Central Bank chairman Jean-Claude Trichet.