World Leaders Gather for the world Summit ( Will They Save The World ? )

By S. STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — When President Bush welcomed leaders from around the world to the White House on Friday night, for what may well be one of the last formal dinners of his administration, the topic was the fragile world economy and the lush menu, belying the financial crisis, featured thyme-roasted rack of lamb. But the real story was in the seating chart.


Economix: Primer on the Economic SummitThere, in the State Dining Room beneath a massive portrait of Abraham Lincoln, to Mr. Bush’s right was President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who has complained loudly that developing nations like his were being “infected with problems” not of their making. To Mr. Bush’s left sat a leader with a fat checkbook and the power that comes with it, President Hu Jintao of China.

It was a startling illustration of the way the financial crisis, which originated on Wall Street and has spread around the globe, has remade the international economic world order. By insisting that developing nations be included in the summit meeting, President Bush gave fresh clout to their leaders, each of whom arrived in Washington with his or her own agenda.

But it will be up to a new United States president, Barack Obama, to figure out how to juggle those competing interests — and quickly. The declaration adopted by the leaders on Saturday calls for a second summit just 101 days after Mr. Obama is sworn in. All around Washington this weekend, as black motorcades sped about town and fancy hotels were marked off with the tell-tale police barricades, a sure sign a world leader was in residence, was evidence of Mr. Obama’s challenge.

At the elegant Willard InterContinental Hotel, one of the city’s finest, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France held court after the conference was over. Hours earlier, Mr. Sarkozy was looking chummy with Mr. Bush, giving the president an Obama-style fist bump as the leaders lined up for their official summit “family photo.”

It was Mr. Sarkozy who had pressed a reluctant President Bush into having the summit in the first place, and at the Willard, he was not shy about claiming credit for it — or proclaiming that the era of American hegemony in world finance was over.

“America is the No. 1 power in the world,” he declared. “Is it the only power? No, it isn’t. We are in a new world.”

Over at the Washington Club, an exclusive private club on Dupont Circle, the president of Russia, Dmitri A. Medvedev, addressed an overflow crowd at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Medvedev has been especially combative toward the United States over the economy.

But on Saturday, his talk had little to do with the economy; he spoke at length about the fragile state of United States-Russian relations, and expressed hope that the current chill would thaw under Mr. Obama.

Earlier, at the summit meeting at the National Building Museum, there was lively luncheon talk among the leaders about free trade and the international trade negotiations known as the Doha Round, which have been all but given up for dead. President da Silva of Brazil, who had arrived determined to push for a revival of the trade talks, gave an impassioned speech about what the developing world wants the developed world to do, according to one person who attended.

“We are not asking for assistance; we are not asking for you to give us funds,” Mr. da Silva said, according to this person, who spoke anonymously so he could give a free account of the remarks. “What we want you to do is to fix your own economies. The best thing you can do for us is to return to growth.”

Twenty nations were invited to participate in the meeting, and only two were led by women, neither of whom brought a very strong hand. One of them, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, has become a close ally of Mr. Bush’s, but the German economy has just slipped into recession, and its banks are suffering from having purchased a raft of toxic mortgage-related assets from the United States.

The other, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, is in the economic doghouse with foreign investors, who are pulling their money out of her country after Argentina decided to nationalize $26 billion of private pension funds, raising fears the government was short on cash.

Mrs. Kirchner did little to enhance her reputation for competence when she showed up late for the official photograph on Saturday. She missed the first picture, but the leaders regrouped and took another after she arrived. Mr. Bush, who prides himself on punctuality, just shrugged.

Photographs were the least of his worries; he arrived with an agenda of his own, determined to use the session to lay down a few markers on his way out of office. His first message, aimed at Democrats who are blocking a free trade agreement with Colombia, was that world leaders favor liberal trade rules. Second, he wanted to push back against the notion that free-market capitalism was the root cause of the global meltdown.

On both counts, Mr. Bush seems to have succeeded; the communiqué issued at the meeting’s conclusion said the leaders “underscore the critical importance of rejecting protectionism,” and it was laden with language about the importance of free markets. When the session was over, Mr. Bush emerged to greet reporters and offer a handoff to his successor