Nations at odds on eve of G-20 summit

Obama administration warns against complacency on financial overhaul

Don Wright / AP

Protesters hang a sign from the West End Bridge over the Ohio River, just downstream from the city of Pittsburgh, on Wednesday on the eve of the G-20 summit.

updated 8:58 p.m. ET Sept. 23, 2009

PITTSBURGH - On the eve of a summit of the world’s 20 top economies, the Obama administration pressed leaders on Wednesday to overcome differences and work together more closely in confronting thorny financial and environmental problems.

“We simply cannot walk away from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and not do everything in our power to reform the system that contributed to this breakdown,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a congressional panel in Washington.

President Barack Obama, delivering his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, urged world leaders to join him in confronting an abundance of global challenges.

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“Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone,” he said. Obama was to arrive in Pittsburgh Thursday afternoon. The summit will conclude Friday.

Leaders gathering here face daunting challenges in overcoming differences on major issues ranging from restraining bankers’ bonuses to overhauling financial regulation and plotting a future course for sustainable growth as the worst of the downturn appears to be over.

As some leaders began arriving, police said 14 members of the environmental group Greenpeace were arrested on two bridges. They faced various charges, including possession of an instrument of a crime, disorderly conduct, conspiracy and obstruction.

First, four environmental protesters rappelled off the West End Bridge over the Ohio River, dangling perilously over the water while steadying a large banner warning of “climate destruction” if world leaders don’t act to control carbon dioxide emissions. After about two hours, the protesters climbed safely back up to the bridge deck.

Police said they arrested nine in that episode. Police spokeswoman Diane Richard said five others wearing harnesses and preparing to rappel off another span, the Fort Pitt Bridge, also were arrested.

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Although the U.S. has urged G-20 countries not to scale back stimulus spending programs just yet, it will be hard to maintain such a stance in light of recent improvements in all the major economies, including a far brighter assessment by Federal Reserve policymakers on Tuesday.

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Obama heads to G-20 Summit
Sept. 24: After presenting his foreign policy vision at the United Nations, the president heads to Pittsburgh for the G-20 Summit. NBC’s Savannah Guthrie reports.
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The Fed left interest rates unchanged at low levels while signaling a willingness to begin to unwind some of the rescue programs it established at the depth of the recession. “Economic activity has picked up following its severe downturn,” the Fed policymakers said, a more optimistic view than they issued in August when saying economic activity was “leveling out.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, warned that the earlier “cooperation took place because everybody was scared and understood it was not time to fight one against the other one, but to work together.

CONTINUED : 'That's the big question'

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