Global meltdown helping Asian powers to rise, says Brit Minister

London, Feb.28 (ANI): British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's special envoy on the economic crisis has said the global economic meltdown is accelerating Asia's rise to global power.

Lord Malloch-Brown, the foreign office minister, said the emerging economies were more important than ever in tackling the world's problems.

Speaking in Thailand as he lobbied a meeting of south east Asian leaders on Brown's vision for free trade and financial reform, he said:"[Asian countries] want to know that we are not just going to ask Asia to help with the recovery then go back to our bad old transatlantic ways."

"There has to be a real sense that there's been a real change to reflect the shifting economic sands," The Telegraph quoted him, as saying.

Lord Malloch-Brown said there needed to be a "rebalancing of the global economy and rebalancing of the power in it".

He said that meant giving a greater say in institutions like the International Monetary Fund to Asian countries, many of whom have bitter recent memories of IMF interventions.

According to Lord Malloch-Brown it also meant a greater role for groups such as the G20 leading world economies rather than the more exclusive G8, whose share of the world economy is in decline.

Although Asian economies have been hit hard by the global crisis, the region will continue to grow this year while the economies of the West shrink.

Japan, China and South Korea have announced packages worth hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the IMF and support Asian currencies - taking on a traditional American role.

South East Asian leaders have promised to work together to shield their region from the global economic crisis. (ANI)