New York - Saying US markets have lost some legitimacy as the world pace setter, the head of a new UN panel on the world financial crisis called for a broadened global finance summit after the G-20 leaders meet in Washington in mid November to resolve the economic meltdown.

"The hope is that it will begin a process, set the agenda and it needs to be a multilateral approach in which the voices of all the countries are heard," said Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001.

In close collaboration with the European Union, US President George W Bush is convening a limited financial conference on November 15 in Washington next month.

Bush ignored the suggestions over the weekend by European Union current president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is president of France, and by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to hold the conference at the UN in New York.

Stiglitz said the current global economic crisis is a difficult time that needs the participation of the United Nations.

"The UN is the one source of international legitimacy," he told reporters following a meeting with Ban.

"I think that some aspects of the old order, in which US financial market were seen as a font of wisdom and the source of stability to the global economy, are over," he said.

"They have lost that legitimacy," he said "In that context it's very important that the UN is one place where all nations come together because this global financial crisis is beginning to affect everybody."

Stiglitz was appointed by Ban and the UN General Assembly as head of the Interactive Panel on the Global Financial Crisis, which is scheduled to hold its first meeting October 30 at UN headquarters in New York.

Miguel d'Escoto, the president of the 192-nation assembly, said the panel was set up "in response to the current turmoil in the financial crisis."

The UN panel will discuss also ways to review the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the worst global finance meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Ban will attend the November 15 meeting in Washington after failing to convince Bush to convene a larger conference at UN headquarters.

Sarkozy also wanted the conference to be held in New York, since the crisis began there and should be resolved there, he said on Saturday.

The UN panel is to undertake a "comprehensive review of the international financial system" and suggest steps to be taken by UN members "to secure a more stable global economic order."

Miguel d'Escoto said in a statement that there was growing recognition "that the current turmoil in the financial system cannot be solved through piecemeal responses at the national and regional levels but requires a coordinated effort at the global level."

He said developing countries have not been represented in the Bretton Woods institutions to fight for their economies. He said it is time for the world body to seek the design of a new economic architecture that is inclusive and democratic to be "credible and sustainable."

Miguel d'Escoto has called for democratizing the United Nations since he assumed the presidency of the 192-nation assembly in September, criticizing the world's major political and economic powers of dominating the UN.

He is a former foreign minister of Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government in the 1980s, which fought the US government at the height of the Cold War. (dpa)