Davos, Switzerland  - The World Economic Forum will launch in the upcoming weeks an initiative to focus on reshaping the global financial systems, its founder Klaus Schwab announced Sunday in the closing hours of this year's Davos meeting.

"We will start a Global Redesign Initiative in next few weeks," Schwab said in an impromptu statement.

"It has the support of almost every political leader who was here" at Davos in the past five days, said Schwab, naming specifically UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao as backers.

He said the upcoming meeting in April of the Group of 20 industrialized economies (G20) would not be enough to solve the global economic crisis.

Davos, Switzerland  - World leaders spoke out against protectionism in their speeches at Davos, warning that putting restraints on trade would only worsen and prolong the global economic crisis.

But there were few signs that a sideline meeting Saturday of trade ministers from about 20 countries had managed to push ahead the long-stalled Doha Round of trade talks, meant to create freer markets.

"Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not right," said World Trade Organization Director General Pascal Lamy. "Trade is not the cause of crisis."

Davos, Switzerland  - With the economic crisis likely to dominate much of 2009, world leaders in Davos Friday urged climate change issues to remain in focus.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the UN's Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and others attending the World Economic Forum warned against letting the economic worries overshadow the need to solve the climate issues as the two were interconnected.

Davos, Switzerland  - Pushing for active countercyclical economic policies to work the world economy out of the current downturn, Mexican President Felipe Calderon also said he would continue his tough stance on organized crime.

He said Mexico was, for the first time in the country's volatile history of financial crisis, in good shape to engage in public spending, as it had a sound banking system and was well capitalized.

Davos, Switzerland  - The fight against terrorism could only succeed in Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials gathered at Davos have said, if there was strong international military cooperation and if ordinary people's lives were improved.

The two neighbouring countries would have to implement a strategy which relied as much on development projects as it would on military action against extremists groups employing terrorism, otherwise the people would not be on board.

Davos (Switzerland), Jan. 30 : The Union Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath said here that the Indian economy would continue to grow at a steady pace of 7 to 7.5 percent.

Addressing a press conference at the World Economic Forum here on Friday, Nath said the Indian economy grew by 7.8 per cent in the first half of this fiscal and is expected to maintain the same growth rate, more or less, in the next financial year.