British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for global unity and reform of the IMF to face the fallout of the economic crisis, at a conference in Chile ahead of a key G20 summit in London next week.

Brown will host world leaders from the Group of 20 industrialised and developing economies for a crucial summit aimed at coordinating global efforts to fight the economic downturn and preventing similar crises.

"We cannot solve the problem of global financial instability without there being a global solution," Brown told center-left leaders and policy makers at a two-day conference in the Chilean resort town of Vina del Mar, due to end Saturday.

"We must reform the International Monetary Fund, (and) we must have an institution that can deal with the problems of the environment," Brown told participants at the two-day Progressive Governance conference.

"It is absolutely clear that the global institutions that we built in the 1940s are quite incapable of dealing with the problems that we have now."

Brown said that 100 million people had been thrust into poverty as a result of the crisis, 30 million more people will be unemployed, and that half a million children would die due to poverty, according to the World Bank.

Host and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet also called of major reform of the IMF to make economic cooperation work.

"We need to coordinate the effort of countries on plans for fiscal stimulus," Bachelet added.

IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Friday that more government stimulus plans may be needed in 2010 to boost the world economy.

European countries including France and Germany have so far brushed off calls from the United States to increase their spending plans, saying they have done enough and there should be more emphasis on financial regulation.

During a meeting in Brazil on Thursday, Brown and Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva meanwhile proposed to create a $100-billion global fund to boost trade.

Lula, US Vice President Joe Biden, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg also attended the Chile meeting, as well as Argentina's President Cristina Kirchner.

The conference was organized by Policy Network, an international think tank initiated 10 years ago by former US president Bill Clinton, with past meetings in Washington, Berlin, Stockholm, London, Budapest and Johannesburg.

Biden was due to take part in an official visit to Chile on Saturday before traveling to Costa Rica.

During his first Latin America trip, the US vice president sounded out regional leaders ahead of the Summit of the Americas next month in Trinidad and Tobago, which will be US President Barack Obama's first major regional summit.

"These meetings are an important first step toward a new day in relations and building partnerships," Biden wrote in an op-ed published in 11 Latin American newspapers Friday.

His tour comes as decades-long US influence is waning in the region, while Latin American countries have grown stronger and expanded relations with others, including China, Russia and India.

AFP