Finance ministers from the world's leading industrial countries put fresh pressure on Japan yesterday to do all it can to haul Asia out of its economic crisis.
As violent protests in Indonesia underscored the scale of the region's problems, US Treasury Secretary, Mr Robert Rubin and British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown sent a blunt message to Tokyo.
Mr Rubin, speaking ahead of a meeting of Group of Seven finance ministers, welcomed a package of measures Japan unveiled last month aimed at reviving the world's second-largest economy.
But he told financiers in London that Japan needed to do more to breathe life into its ailing financial sector, implement structural reforms and boost growth.
"What is important now is sustained adherence to strong reform programmes, as difficult politically as that may be," Mr Rubin said.
"All of these are obviously difficult political challenges but are critical to Japan's own economic well-being and the economic well-being of Japan's neighbours and the rest of the world."
Mr Rubin later joined Mr Brown and their opposite numbers from Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada for the opening session of a two-day meeting that will prepare the ground for next week's annual economic summit of the Group of Eight.
The eighth member of the G8 is Russia, whose finance minister will join the G7 on Saturday to discuss employment policies.
Mr Brown stressed the need for an overhaul of international financial institutions to avert future crises. The International Monetary Fund should be given more power and it should co-ordinate more closely with the World Bank.
Asian countries have been rocked over the last nine months by a financial crisis that sent many currencies plunging and forced a host of banks and firms into bankruptcy. An exodus of hot money by nervous international investors exacerbated the crisis in a number of countries.
"In Asia, it is absolutely clear that if information had been provided earlier then some of the excessive market corrections which came later could have been avoided," Mr Brown said.
But just back from a whistlestop tour of Asia, Mr Brown said the poor and unemployed must not be forgotten in the rush to implement the sweeping reforms needed to revive the region.
G8 foreign ministers began two days of parallel talks with a crowded agenda stretching from the crisis over Kosovo to measures to protect the world's forests.
