No date yet for possible G8 summit: U.S.

ROME (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush proposed holding an extraordinary summit of the Group of Eight leaders next Tuesday, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi said, but the White House said no meeting had been scheduled for then.

"As we have said, the president (George W. Bush) is open to the idea of leaders meeting at an appropriate time to discuss financial market issues, but there is no meeting scheduled for Tuesday," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.

He was responding to the Italian prime minister's statement that Bush had called all G8 leaders by telephone on Wednesday to invite them to a Tuesday summit.

"I said I was available for that or any other date," Berlusconi told a news conference. On Monday, the Italian leader is due to be in Washington to celebrate Columbus day.

Berlusconi said French President Nicolas Sarkozy was cautious about the date. "Sarkozy told me: 'let's see how things go, what else do we need to do?'."

With finance ministers and central bank chiefs of the world's leading industrialized nations meeting in Washington on Friday, there has been talk of holding a summit on the global financial crisis.

Last month, Sarkozy told the United Nations General Assembly he wanted a summit of world leaders convened in November to look at ways of overhauling a "crazy" financial system.

Berlusconi's cabinet passed a decree late on Wednesday aimed at reassuring the banking sector. It makes the state the guarantor of last resort for bank deposits up to 103,000 euros and would allow the state to inject capital into banks in return for non-voting shares.

"We had to stop the panic and we did it," Berlusconi said.

(Reporting by Francesca Piscioneri; writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Charles Dick)