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President 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 Saturday.

Word of the impending announcement came at Camp David 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 favor 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 U.S. hasn’t signed on to the more ambitious, broad-stroke revisions that some European leaders like Sarkozy have in mind.

Sarkozy and Barroso were stopping at Camp David to meet with 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 Bush and representatives of presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, to meet before the end of the year, possibly in New York, and to forge a new vision for the global economy.

Associated Press

tags economy bush capitalism money business marx capital