Brussels - In a diplomatic victory for Spain, European Union leaders Friday were set to back its invitation to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) of top central banks, just weeks after six middle-weight EU members accused the country of "gate-crashing."

A draft statement prepared for a summit of EU leaders and seen by Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa welcomed the expansion of the FSF to "all members of the Group of 20 (G20) leading economies, Spain and the European Commission," the EU's executive.

The Swiss-based FSF is a grouping of some of the world's top central banks and international financial institutions. It is charged with overseeing the world's financial markets in a bid to forestall the kind of meltdown which is now devastating the global economy.

Its traditional members include the central banks of Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.

On March 12, in a bid to regain control of world markets, it expanded its membership to include G20 members Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey, and non-members Spain and the European Commission.

Spain has lobbied vigorously since the summer for inclusion in the G20 and FSF, arguing that its spectacular economic growth over the last decade makes it a significant economic player.

Its efforts were crowned in November with an invitation to an emergency G20 summit on the world financial and economic crisis in Washington and to a follow-up summit in London on April 2.

The Netherlands also won an invitation to the G20 table.

But the two countries' diplomatic shove exposed them to accusations of "gate-crashing" from other EU member states.

On Monday, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said that "there was an element of gate-crashing" in the G20 expansion which "led to some question marks" in other EU states. Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg, Poland and Portugal also attacked the expansion.

However, Bildt stressed that it is "more important to get a substantive output (from the April summit) than to quarrel about the mathematics." (dpa)