Efforts to find a lasting solution to the world's financial problems have dominated more than two days of top-level talks among financial leaders gathered for the International Monetary Fund's annual meeting. They were at the top of the agenda once again when representatives from industrialised and developing countries met for a special debating session late on Monday.

US president Bill Clinton, who last week tried to seize the initiative by proposing a new mechanism that would give troubled nations easier and faster access to much-needed cash before their economies crash, told the conference it was crucial to boost a wheezing global financial system.

"We must ensure that the international financial architecture is prepared for the new challenges of our time, especially thechallenge of building a system that will lessen and manage the risks in the global market to allow countries to reap the benefits of free flowing capital in a way that is safe and sustainable," he said in a brief opening speech.

Officials described the meeting as being aimed primarily at finding ways of forestalling future crises rather than dealing with the immediate turmoil raging in the world right now.

The group, known as the Group of 22 before four more countries joined last week, will also discuss more theoretical documents on how to improve the transparency of a country's economic system and data or boost governments' accountability.

Financial leaders' glaring failure to offer concrete plans in the face of mounting global turmoil came under fire even before the finance ministers and central bankers began filing into a downtown Washington luxury hotel for the evening.

Billionaire financier George Soros said financial leaders from the Group of Seven top industrial nations, who had met separatelyon Saturday, should have nailed down the specifics of the US plan rather than just pledging to "explore" it, as they did in a statement released after their meeting.

Soros said the plan was "on the right track" but added that "Those people should have been shut into a room and hammered this thing out and come out with a decision rather than decide to explore. I think the situation is more urgent than that."

The problems now threatening economic growth and prosperity around the world started in Thailand over a year ago, then spread across Asia to Russia and finally to Latin America.

Ministers have called for firm action, but there is little sign that they are ready for coordinated interest rate cuts to ease the crisis and help calm jittery financial markets.

Soros, a Hungarian-born hedge fund manger whose speculation helped eject the British pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992, criticised the G7 for failing to consider the option of joint rate cuts, while cautioning eventhat would not be sufficient to stop the global wildfire.

"You have to find some way to arrest the reverse flow of capital and provide credit guarantees to the countries from which capital is now fleeing," he said, referring to the huge outflow of money from struggling emerging markets that is hurting their ability to ever recover from the crisis.

Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, is one country hit by such massive capital flight. Brazilian Central Bank President Gustavo Franco said he expected his country to reach agreement soon on a precautionary aid deal to help it cope with the crisis developing right in Washington's backyard.

Deputy US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers told a news briefing at the White House that the world was ready to help Brazil but cautioned any assistance would be contingent on Brazil taking the right policy steps.

"The international community is certainly prepared to be supportive of Brazil at this important junction," he said.

Others cautioned no announcement ofan IMF deal should be expected just yet. "It will not be tomorrow, we are talking about the next week or so," Claudio Loser, director of the IMF's Western Hemisphere Department, told reporters.

Clinton is scheduled to speak to the opening session of the IMF-World Bank meetings on Tuesday. The Democratic president has so far failed to persuade the Republican-controlled Congress to approve $18 billion in new money for the IMF.

Washington's failure to pay its bills has caused mounting frustration among its European partners.

"The United States must not default on its responsibility,"French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Sunday.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown also joined in the criticism. "All other countries are ready to make their contributions," he noted.