Lima: US President George W Bush, attending his final global summit at a time of severe financial crisis, urged other countries today not to repeat mistakes that turned a similar calamity seven decades ago into the Great Depression.
He said nations should spurn calls to erect protectionist trade barriers and keep pushing to liberalize trade.
One of the enduring lessons of the Great Depression is that global protectionism is a path to global economic ruin, Bush said in comments to business executives of Pacific Rim countries.
Bush was in Lima to attend his eighth and final meeting of the 21-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Bush said that because the economic problems are so widespread, all nations - both developed and developing - must work together to find solutions. He urged them to resist the "temptation to over correct" to fix the fiscal crisis. Bush has argued against over-regulating financial markets.
Recovering from the financial crisis is going to take time, but we ll recover and so begin a new era of economic prosperity," Bush declared.
Bush was hoping to use his final APEC summit to get endorsement of a sweeping action plan to attack the global financial crisis that was drafted last week in Washington at a meeting of the Group of 20 nations, which include the world s richest economies plus major developing nations such as China, Brazil, India and Russia. Nine of the countries at the G-20 meeting are also members of APEC.
