EU leaders' financial crisis meeting

(Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday hosted a meeting to discuss the financial crisis.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Eurogroup Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker were all at the meeting.

Below are some highlights of their comments on the way into the meeting, from the press conference afterwards, as well as comments from the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who met Sarkozy earlier on Saturday.

MERKEL

"The politicians have to take responsibility in this very difficult situation, but those who have caused the damage must contribute to the solution."

SARKOZY

"We have taken a solemn undertaking as heads of states and governments to support the banks and financial institutions in the face of this crisis."

BROWN

"Where action has to be taken we have done whatever is necessary and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to preserve the stability of the financial system. We agreed today, and this is the message to families and businesses, and as our central banks are already doing, liquidity will be assured in order to preserve confidence and stability. That is the message all citizens of Europe want to hear."

BERLUSCONI

"I personally am satisfied with the outcome of this meeting and I hope that our ministers of finance and all the members of the European council of the European Union will be able to transcribe all that is contained in this document which is basically a set proposals to all our partners."

STRAUSS-KAHN

"What is needed in Europe is coordination, whatever the method. What counts above all is coordination and the will not to act each for himself as we have seen a little bit in some European cases.

"I hope that Sarkozy will come out with a message to the Europeans, a message of concerted collective action which is even more necessary in Europe than in the United States because Europe is a more complex construction.

"The world economic situation is very worrying and the IMF is going to publish growth forecasts that are markedly lower than what we have had until now.

"The formula of a new Bretton Woods is a pretty formula. What is sure is that it is necessary to review the functioning of the architecture of the global financial system."

(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach, Tamora Vidaillet and Crispian Balmer)