SAO PAULO - EMERGING economies pressed on Saturday for a greater role ahead of a Washington summit next week at which world leaders will try to agree a common approach to the global financial crisis.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Sao Paolo to lay the groundwork for the Nov 15 talks that a 'new world financial architecture' was needed to coordinate change.

'It's time for a pact between governments for the creation of a new world financial architecture,' Mr Lula said.

'This is a global crisis and it demands global solutions.'

Mr Lula said nations struggling with the crisis must 'avoid temptations to take unilateral measures,' and stressed that 'new universal mechanisms are needed'.

Success at the Washington summit on Nov 15 will depend on the extent to which countries can come together to agree joint action.

The White House said on Saturday it believed the EU and US were on common ground, but doubts remained about whether the US would back European calls for enhanced regulation.

'We believe there is a great deal of common ground among our approaches to address the turmoil in the financial markets,' said White Houe spokesman Dana Perino after EU leaders agreed their approach on Friday in Brussels.

Ms Perino said the summit would also 'reaffirm a commitment to free market principles, including open and competitive economies, expanded trade, and increased investment and capital flows.'

EU leaders want no financial product, nor jurisdiction nor institution to be beyond the reach of oversight.

Next week's summit gathers G20 leaders - plus Spain, which has successfully lobbied for France's second seat as current European Union president.

The top emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China, known collectively as BRIC - want 'a reorganisation of the world financial system,' Brazilian Economy Minister Guido Mantega told reporters on Friday.

Specifically, he said, the system put in place by the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement was outdated and needed to be changed to take into account the greater economic importance of emerging nations.

The emerging nations want to see the G20 - which includes the G7, BRIC and other significant developing economies - reinforced and elevated to a heads-of-state and heads-of-government level, above the finance ministerial status it currently has.

But Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, told the Financial Times that changewould take time.

'Things are not going to change overnight. Bretton Woods took two years to prepare... The words sound nice but we are not going to create a new international treaty,' Strauss-Kahn said.

The G20 includes the seven major industrialized nations - Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany and the United States - plus Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey, plus the 27-nation European Union as a bloc.

Spain, the world's eighth largest economy, will join Britain, France, Germany and Italy among European representatives, although Madrid's participation is so far only on an exceptional basis.

The fallout from troubles in the banking system at the root of the calls for an overhaul saw Belgian prosecutors open an inquiry into alleged insider trading by the wife of Foreign Minister Kared De Gucht, press reports said Saturday.

Thousands of demonstrators also took to the streets of the Icelandic capital Reyjavik to call on the government to resign and for banks to be more open about the country's financial crisis.

Meanwhile, the OPEC oil group indicated that it might cut production again to drive crude prices back up.

The cartel's current head, Algeria's energy minister Chakib Khelil, decliend Saturday to rule out another cut in output if the price of crude oil remained below 70 dollars per barrel before an OPEC meeting in December.

'We have always said that our objective is 70 to 90 dollars a barrel,' said Khelil at an energy industry seminar in Algiers.

'If the barrel price does not reach this level, there will probably be another (production) cutback,' he said, adding however that there must be consensus among all OPEC nations, 'and everyone has their own interests.'

Oil prices closed mixed Friday after striking 21-month lows, with light sweet crude for delivery in December at 60.04 dollars in New York and Brent North Sea crude for December at 57.35 dollars in London. -- AFP