World Economic Forum meets in Turkey

ISTANBUL, Turkey - The World Economic Forum opened a regional meeting in Turkey on Thursday that organizers hope will shape solutions to the global economic crisis.

The three-day meeting, which ends Saturday, will also focus on business opportunities that might arise from the crisis, energy and resources security, Central Asia's role in the world and Turkey's position as a bridge among Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

"We are really looking at options of how to get the global economy's engine started" once the crisis eases, said Borge Brende, managing director of the forum and Norway's former minister of trade and industry.

Turkey and other countries with developing economies "can't decouple from the potential recession we are now seeing in the U.S. and in Europe," Brende said. "But we would like to sit together and develop strategies on how to overcome this as fast as possible and to have sustainable growth again."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, are among leaders expected to attend the Istanbul meeting of the forum, which is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was scheduled to give a keynote speech late Thursday.

Thomas Mirow, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, was also at the meeting. He told Associated Press Television News in London earlier this week that the bank could not provide major funding to countries on a scale with loans from the International Monetary Fund.

"What we can and will do is sustain our engagement in these countries, meaning supporting banks running into trouble, helping our corporate clients who may be in need of a credit line, for instance for foreign trade," Mirow said. "So we will stick to our engagements, we will improve our engagements and by this contribute to a stabilization."

Asian stock markets rallied Thursday, led by a 12 percent jump in South Korea, after the U.S. Federal Reserve slashed interest rates to help revive the world's largest economy and opened new credit lines with central banks. However, analysts expect more bad economic news and market volatility.

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