China PM calls on Russia to fight crisis together

By Oleg Shchedrov and Anton Doroshev

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and China should step up cooperation in the financial sector to fight the global crisis and join forces to reform the global financial architecture, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Tuesday.

"We need strategic cooperation on the financial market," Wen told a Russian-Chinese business forum in Moscow. "We need to step up infromation cooperation, coordinate our macroeconomic policies."

Wen visited Moscow just three weeks before Russian and Chinese leaders are due to take part in an emergency summit in Washington called to discuss measures to end the current turmoil and to reshape the global financial architecture.

The two countries, with Brazil and India, belong to the so- called BRIC group of developing economies, which have been showing the fastest rates of economic growth in the past decade.

China and Russia, keen to enhance their global role, blame the current crisis -- which endangers their economic progress -- on the inefficiency of the existing financial infrastructure focused on the U.S. dollar.

"Reforming the global financial infrastructure ... is an important thing and most timely now," Wen said.

"We need a new system whereby developing nations will have a stronger say," he added. "We need to diversify the global currency system, to support its stability through the use of different currencies."

Russian Prime Minsiter Vladimir Putin suggested that switching, at least partially, to the rouble and yuan in mutual trade could help both countries to weather the crisis.

"At the moment the world which is based on the dollar is suffering serious problems ... The situation on the global financial markets remains difficult," he told the forum.

"In such conditions, we need to think about improving the payments system for bilateral trade, including the use of the national currencies," he added.

Wen later said he and Putin had discussed how to combine resources of the two countries in time of crisis. China has the world's largest currency reserves of $1.9 trillion, while Russia has amassed over $500 billion in years of its economic boom.

"We paid specific attention at our meeting to ... joining forces in resisting the financial and economic crisis and strenghtening our financial cooperation," Wen told a news briefing after talks with Putin.

"This will help stabilise our national economies, stabilise finance and stabilise capital markets," he added.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told reporters that Russian oil firms would receive "considerable" loans from China in return for increased oil supplies.

Industry sources said on Monday Beijing was in talks to lend between $20 billion and $25 billion in export-backed loans, allowing Russian firms to sort out immediate financing needs during an acute liquidity squeeze and an oil price slump.