(Adds news conference in paragraph 4, details paragraph 6) By Adrian Croft NEW DELHI, Jan 21 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on Monday for an overhaul of global institutions to counter financial crises, deal with new priorities such as climate change and recognise the rise of new powers like India. In a wide-ranging speech, he said the international institutions formed after World War Two, such as the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), had to be radically reformed to fit the new, globalised world. He said he supported India's bid to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, where Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States have wielded exclusive veto power since 1945. "I'm in absolutely no doubt that a country of a billion people, that is the largest democracy in the world ... should have a place in the U.N. Security Council as it is enhanced and reformed," Brown told a news conference later on Monday. Brown is on an official visit to India drumming up support for business with the growing economic powerhouse, which is also increasingly playing a more important diplomatic role in Asia. A British government source said around $10 billion worth of contracts with India were under negotiation in the energy, aviation and technology sectors. Brown called for changes to the IMF, World Bank and the Group of Eight leading industrial countries to reflect the rising economic clout of India and Asia in general. He proposed turning the IMF into an independent watchdog that would form the heart of a global early warning system against financial turbulence. He suggested there should be rapid response teams of police and experts that could move quickly to restore order and begin rebuilding after conflicts. NEW FUNDS Brown called for a new U.N. crisis prevention and recovery fund and for a multi-billion-dollar global climate change fund within the World Bank to finance environmentally sustainable development in the poorest countries. He said Britain would play a leading role in efforts to speed up nuclear disarmament "and to ultimately achieve a world freer from nuclear weapons". London would also press for early agreement on a new international system to help non-nuclear states acquire new sources of energy, he said. Brown believes the rapid spread of the credit crisis last year, after problems with U.S. sub-prime mortgages, points to failings in global financial supervision which must be fixed. "I propose that the IMF should act with the same kind of independence as a central bank in a national country," he said. "It should make its focus the surveillance of the global economic and financial system. Its role should be to prevent crises and not simply to manage or resolve them as in the past," said Brown, nearing the end of a four-day trip to China and India. "The IMF, working with the global Financial Stability Forum, should be at the heart of ... an early warning system, involving regulators and supervisors in all countries, for financial turbulence affecting the global economy," he added. The Financial Stability Forum groups central banks, regulators and international bodies. He said the IMF should develop a financial instrument to insure "well-managed economies against sudden reversals of capital flows" but gave no details. The credit crunch claimed a high-profile casualty in Britain when mortgage lender Northern Rock <NRK.L >suffered the country's first bank run in more than a century last year. Northern Rock has borrowed about 26 billion pounds ($50.9 billion) from the Bank of England, creating a huge political headache for Brown. Brown meets the leaders of France, Germany and Italy in London on January 29 to discuss a response to the crisis. (Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Sanjeev Miglani)
A farmer drives past a sign with directions to the Dongtan Wetland, where Dongtan Eco City is planned to be built, on Chong Ming Island southeast to Shanghai January 21, 2008. ...
