Washington - The world's top economic powers hoped that a guarantee to take action on the financial crisis would be enough to stop a global sell-off in stocks as they kicked off a meeting at the US Treasury on Friday.

But finance ministers and central bank heads from the Group of Seven (G7) industrial nations were reluctant to offer a common, cross-border solution to shore up banks on the brink of bankruptcy in their own countries.

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said the German government was open to taking a stake in its banks in order to help inject capital into the sector and warned that "case-by-case" interventions were no longer possible.

But he also said the type of government interventions would have to differ from country to country and did not suggest an international plan was in the works.

The White House Thursday said a similar plan to take stakes in banks was in the works for the US, as part of the 700-billion-dollar rescue package passed last week.

Alastair Darling, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, told the BBC it was "essential" that governments be "prepared to do whatever it takes" to help stabilize the global financial system, which has seen a rash of bank failures and bail-outs in the US and Europe since September.

"This is a genuinely global problem and we, all of us, all over the world, need to step up to the mark and do something about it," Darling said.

Global stocks took another nose dive on Friday at the end of a tumultuous week. Major US stock indices were on track for one of their worst weeks in history.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Friday that the only way to restore market confidence was through "government intervention which is clear, comprehensive and cooperative among countries."

Strauss-Kahn on Thursday said the world was on the "cusp" of a recession after the IMF forecast global growth of 3 per cent next year. Growth below 3 per cent is considered a global recession by the IMF.

But while talking of coordination and pledging to prevent serious bank failures, the G7 is unlikely to make any commitment to jointly shore up the banking sector or guarantee loans between banks in order to ease the credit crunch, Bloomberg News reported, citing an official from a G7 member country.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has also shown a reluctance to adopt joint measures that go beyond the key nations coordinating and consulting on their national plans.

"When we look at the G7, you have very different countries (and) financial systems with different needs, and so I think it would not make sense to have identical policies," he said in a pre-G7 briefing Wednesday. "The key point is that we continue to work closely together."

The G7 is one of a series of meetings this week in Washington between the world's finance ministers. Paulson will be hosting a gathering of the world's 20 leading economies on Saturday on the sidelines of the annual International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings this weekend. (dpa)