UN / BROWN

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met reporters today (25 March) at the United Nations after closed-doors talks on the up-coming G-20 summit, the global financial crisis, and the situation in Sudan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

On the global economic crisis, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that the Washington consensus on economic policies was over, that the old world had gone, and that there was a need to build a new consensus on economic development for the future.

He stressed that the message to every country was that “doing nothing is no longer an option.”

On the issue of the Sudanese government’s expulsion of humanitarian agencies from Darfur, Brown said that he wanted the “whole world” to ask President Omar al-Bashir to remove the ban on humanitarian agencies, and to recognize that they are “absolutely essential” to the protection of the people in Sudan.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was asked to confirm whether he had been accurately quoted in a recent report saying he would ask the G-20 leaders for one trillion dollars to help the developing world deal with the financial crisis.

Ban responded that he had written a letter to all G-20 leaders on how the international community could address the economic crisis, and that his position was that while he would welcome the G-20 leaders formulating their national stimulus packages, they should never lose sight of the challenges of the developing countries.

Ban said he was “sure that G-20 leaders will reflect and consider positively on addressing these issues”. On the amount of aid he had “some ideas” but he was not presently in a position to say anything in “exact amount terms.”

The G-20 are scheduled to meet in London on 2 April.