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."

Switzerland - In his address to the  World Economic Forum Saturday, Japan's Taro Aso said his country was ready to provide 17 billion dollars in development assistance to Asian countries.

"It is Asia that holds the greatest potential anywhere in the world," said the prime minister, noting that 40 per cent of world's population resides there and the region has an economic growth rate of about 4 per cent.

Davos (Switzerland), Jan. 31 : Union Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath has stated that hope and aspiration in India is leading to social mobility and prosperity and these are the engines that are driving India's growth today.

Speaking at a Breakfast Session on "Surviving the Meltdown and Brand India", here today, Nath said that Brand India will be sustained by millions of "new" consumers seamlessly and further added that India neither needs to export a large part of its economy to balance domestic demand and supply, nor does it need to import large amounts of capital to balance domestic demand and supply.

Switzerland - With the issues of climate change and the global economic crisis coming to a head simultaneously, world leaders have focused on tying the two together, and businessmen Saturday were trying to find ways to make money from a green economy.

Europe's carbon credit trading program, in its second phase, is seen as being on the path to putting a price on pollution and creating a market that would allow for profit making.

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.