Gordon Brown has urged the leaders of the G20 countries to issue a strong message rejecting protectionism, following a meeting with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet ahead of the London Summit on Thursday.

'One of the messages that must come from next week's summit is that we will reject protectionist tendencies,' Mr Brown said, at a press conference during what was the first visit to Chile by a UK prime minister.

The Prime Minister is reaching the end of a three-continent tour in preparation for the London Summit, the final stages of a campaign that began at the start of the year to win agreement on coordinated international action by the world’s biggest economies to deal with the global crisis. His journey has taken him from the European parliament in Strasbourg to New York where he addressed Wall Street leaders and met the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, journeying on to Brazil for discussions with President Luiz Ignácio Lula da Silva and ending in Chile to speak at a Progressive Governance Conference.

During a joint press conference with Mr Brown at the Presidential Palace in Santiago, President Bachelet also stressed the importance of fiscal stimulus measures to boost chances of a swift recovery.

`If the trillions of dollars that are being mobilised to overcome the international economic crisis are used in a wise and creative way, we can today respond internationally to create decent jobs for thousands,’ she said later - adding they would also help reduce poverty and environmental risks.

At the Progressive Governance Conference, staged in the Chilean coastal resort of Vina del Mar, Mr Brown also met leading politicians from around the world to discuss future political trends after the global crisis. Others speaking at the conference included US Vice-President Joe Biden, Brazil’s President Lula, Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

Speaking at the conference, Brown said markets had not been working in the public interest and deep reforms were needed in the financial system. `We have got to begin again and remake our institutions. We have got to reshape the rules of the financial system,’ the Prime Minister said.

Earlier, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, said the London Summit had been ‘well prepared and that the preparation should make it possible for the meeting to be a success.’ At a press conference streamed on the internet between Washington, London and Paris, he urged world leaders to end the London Summit with an agreement on a platform of six key reforms needed to deliver economic recovery:

• Fixing the financial sector and cleaning up the balance sheets of the banks;
• While the fiscal stimulus in 2009 was roughly in line with the IMF’s target 2 per cent of GDP, countries should make sure that more was available for 2010 ‘if needed’;
• Further resources for the IMF to help emerging market countries hit by the massive falls in capital flows;
• Approval for the doubling of concessional loans from the IMF to low-income countries facing a slump in exports and commodity prices;
• Approval for the IMF’s overhaul of the fund’s lending framework; and
• Agreement on regulatory reform for the banking sector, tax havens, credit rating agencies and hedge funds.

Mr Strauss-Kahn acknowledged governments needed to think of the implications for the medium term of the actions they were taking now but added: ‘The risk of doing nothing is bigger than the risk of moving.’