CAMP DAVID, Oct 18: President George W. Bush will announce he plans to host a summit of world leaders in the near future to discuss the global response to the financial crisis, a senior administration official said on Saturday.

Word of the impending announcement came at the Camp David presidential retreat where European leaders are lobbying Bush to hold a summit by year’s end.

The summit will focus on ideas to prevent a crisis from recurring in the future and to preserve the free market system, said the Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement has not yet been made.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso are trying to convince Bush that now is a good opportunity to tighten and better coordinate control of the financial markets, in response to the economic crisis that has shaken markets around the globe.

The president has backed the steps European nations have taken to stem the economic crisis, and is in favour of a meeting in the near future of the Group of Eight industrialized powers and other emerging economies like China and India. The White House says Bush, who has just three months left in office, wants to listen to a broad range of ideas, not just from Europe, but from Asia and developing countries.

But the US has not signed on to the more ambitious, broad-stroke revisions that some European leaders like Sarkozy have in mind for the world financial system.

Sarkozy and Barroso were stopping at Camp David to meet Bush on their way home from a summit in Canada.

On Friday, Sarkozy repeated his call to overhaul the global financial system so that it can be better supervised in the wake of the crisis.

“Together we need to rebuild a capitalism that is more respectful to man, more respectful to the planet, more respectful to future generations and be finished with a capitalism obsessed by the frantic search for short-term profit,” Sarkozy said.Sarkozy and other European leaders want to hold a financial crisis summit before the end of the year, possibly in New York, and to forge a new vision for the global economy. Sarkozy has floated the idea of reforming rating agencies and even exploring the future of currency systems.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who engineered a British bank bailout that inspired US and European rescues, is proposing radical changes to the global capitalist system, including a cross-border mechanism to monitor the world’s 30 biggest financial institutions.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the Camp David meeting was not expected to produce any new policy decisions. Instead, she said it would focus on efforts, extending as far back as April, on coordination for financial stability through measures such as bank disclosures, accounting rules at credit rating agencies, capital standards and asset valuation.

In his weekly radio address, Bush on Saturday sought to reassure Americans about the cost and scope of the nation’s financial bailout plan and said that in the long run “our economy will bounce back.” He acknowledged that people are concerned about their finances and, while he offered assurances about an eventual recovery, he did not say when that would happen.

Since Oct. 9, 2007, when the Dow topped 14,000, investors have lost $8.3 trillion from pension funds, college savings plans, 401(k) retirement accounts and other investments. Congress gave Bush a $700 billion plan to buy bad assets from banks and other institutions to shore up the financial industry.

“The federal government has responded to this crisis with systematic and aggressive measures to protect the financial security of the American people,” Bush said in the radio broadcast. “These actions will take more time to have their full impact. But they are big enough and bold enough to work.”—AP