Cooperation Critical To Restore Growth - UK Brown

Brown said it was necessary to deal with militants taking refuge in Pakistan but also to build up the Afghan government.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Tuesday a concerted effort to set and enforce new standards for the financial sector will be the key to returning confidence and growth to the global economy.

Brown, in Washington for talks with President Barack Obama, said a global solution was needed to deal with the collapse of the banking system that required uniform rules on transparency, disclosure, accountability and pay.

"This is a global problem. It needs global solutions," Brown told National Public Radio in an interview.

"We need to show the world can come together, not only to have fiscal stimulus for the economy but also to set standards that, if people are not able to meet, we would have a mechanism by which we would say 'This is not good enough' and people would lose their status in the international community."

Brown, who will host a summit of the Group of 20 developed and emerging economies on April 2, said there was a "general understanding" of the need to be far better at dealing with cross-border supervision and flows of capital.

"This is a banking crisis, so we've got to go to the roots of it and we've got to clean up the banking system," he said.

"The level of international cooperation, what we can do together, will in one sense dictate how quickly we can come out of this downturn."

He did not directly answer a question about whether there would be strong economic growth next year but said the stimulus packages, combined with cooperation among governments, would "make a big difference to our chances of recovery quickly."

"A lot of people looking at this downturn are looking also at the way we can create a better and stronger and more stable economy in the upturn," Brown said.

"What you really need is a better early warning system. What you need are better rules and standards that can be adopted and can be understood to be the fair ones across the system. What, of course, you need is governments that are prepared to take the supervisory action."

AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN

On the war in Afghanistan, where Britain has more than 8,000 troops and Obama has committed another 17,000 U.S. soldiers, Brown said the solution went beyond the military.

"We can't solve the problem of Afghanistan without looking at what's happening in Pakistan," he said. "Secondly, we're dealing with a new tactic on the part of the Taliban -- it's essentially guerrilla warfare."

Brown said it was necessary to deal with militants taking refuge in Pakistan but also to build up the Afghan government.

"We want the Afghans to themselves train their army, train their police," he said.

"We need social development, economic development, in Afghanistan. We need to give people prosperity that doesn't come from either the poppy crops or from being linked up to the Taliban and we need strong central government in Afghanistan."