Beijing  - Asian and European leaders plan to call for new goals to fight climate change up to 2012 to be agreed by the end of next year, according to a draft summit statement seen Friday.

"Leaders welcomed the substantial progress made at the climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007," said the draft "chair's statement" from the biannual Asia-Europe Meeting, which opened Friday.

"They confirmed their commitment to securing an ambitious, effective and comprehensive agreed outcome now, up to and beyond 2012, by the end of 2009 on the basis of the Bali road map," said the draft, which is scheduled to be issued on Saturday at the close of the summit.

Beijing - The first Asia-Europe Meeting was held in 1996 in Bangkok as informal talks among 16 European Union members and 10 Asian nations.

The seventh summit this year has grown to include 45 delegations: the European Union's 27 members, 16 Asian states as well as the European Commission and the secretariat of the 10-nation Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The participants represent more than half the world: 58 per cent of its population, 60 per cent of its trade and 50 per cent of its economic performance.

Frankfurt - Global shares are ending the week on a grim note, with a new wave of selling hitting European stocks Friday as concerns grew about the outlook for corporate profits.

Picking up on steep falls on Asian markets and volatile trading on Wall Street, Europe's blue-chip Stoxx 50 plunged more than 6 per cent in early trading Friday with a steady stream of weak third-quarter earnings reports fuelling worries about a looming recession.

Frankfurt - The euro hit a three-year low Friday of below 1.

Beijing - The largest-ever gathering of Asian and European leaders opened on Friday to discuss how to respond to the global financial crisis and combat climate change.

Talks on the financial crisis are expected to be "very intense" between leaders of the 27 European Union member states and 16 Asian nations at the seventh biannual Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Beijing, Serge Abou, the EU's ambassador to China, told reporters earlier.

EU officials said separate "clusters" of discussions were planned on banking and financial systems, and that the EU nations hoped the meeting would promote trade talks between the two continents.

Brussels - The trouble with telling a nervous customer that you have solved their problem is that you first have to admit that there is one. That is the dilemma facing the world's banks, governments and financial institutions as they desperately try to restore faith in an economic system which millions of customers now believe has failed.

"We have shown the world that the United States of America will stabilize our financial markets and maintain a leading role in the global economy," US President George W Bush proclaimed on October 3 after the US Congress passed a 700-billion-dollar bank rescue plan.

His words spectacularly failed to restore global confidence, with stock markets nosediving in the days following the vote.