Alarm bells have also rung in Europe after French President Nicolas Sarkozy said French car makers which received government help should keep domestic jobs first.

When rich countries spent massively to bail out financial institutions, they are required to put priority on domestic lending to help save the economy. This kind of financial protectionism has caused flight of capital from developing and emerging markets.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) warned on Thursday that a gradual build-up of protectionist measures threatens to strangle international trade and hamper global recovery.

"There is no indication of an imminent descent into high intensity protectionism, involving widespread resort to trade restriction and retaliation," the WTO said in a report. "The danger today is of an incremental build-up of restrictions that could slowly strangle international trade and undercut the effectiveness of policies to boost aggregate demand and restore sustained growth globally," it said.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy urged the G20 leaders to make a strong commitment to avoiding trade restricting or distorting measures and working for a rapid conclusion of the long-stalled Doha round of global trade talks.

The WTO estimated that tariff and subsidy cuts for trade in goods already on the table in the Doha global trade talks were equivalent to a new stimulus package of 150 billion euros (about US$195 billion).

It had already warned that global trade would shrink by 9 percent this year, the worst drop since World War II, due to dwindling demand, while the threat of protectionism would only make the situation even worse.

After meeting Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in Santiago, Brown said that the London summit should send a strong warning against protectionism.

"One of the messages that must come from next week's summit is that we will reject protectionist countries, we will monitor thosecountries and name and shame if necessary countries that are not following free trade practices," he said.

Brown agreed with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday that they will propose at the London summit to create a 100-billion-dollar global fund to provide trade finance.

No matter what the G20 leaders could really achieve at the London summit, German Chancellor Merkel had already acknowledged there is no quick fix to all the problems.

"We are talking about building a new global financial market architecture and we will not be able to finish this in London," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 30, 2009)