Thaindian News

Moscow, Nov 5 (DPA) Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for a radical reform to the global financial order Wednesday, saying the United States has become the affliction and could no longer provide for world markets.Medvedev said he bring these demands before world leaders at a summit on the financial crisis in Washington on Nov 15 and seek support for a new international accord.

“The lessons of the mistakes and crises of 2008 have proved to all responsible nations the time has come to act, and it’s necessary for radical reform,” Medvedev said center stage in the Kremlin’s most opulent hall for his first state-of-the-nation address since taking office in May.

He said Russia would cooperate with the European Union, the United States, Brazil, India and China to “create mechanisms that would block erroneous, egotistical and even dangerous decisions by certain members of the global community.”

The comments folded into a wider ribbing of the US policy for recklessness in spreading its financial ills to global markets and an aggressively self-interested foreign policy.

Russian authorities have buoyed up their popularity during the crisis by throwing the blame on the United States and emphasizing that the country has sufficient resources to ride out and even come out better off from the crisis.

“We will overcome the consequences of the world economic crisis and will come out of it even stronger than we were,” Medvedev told the national in the televised 85-minute speech.

The Kremlin has surged on oil profits of recent years with ambitions to play a greater role in international politics. Medvedev suggested the ruble become a regional reserve currency and energy trade be conducted in the national currency.

The crisis has become an opportunity Moscow hopes to use to become a central player in any reshuffle to the financial order.

“I believe the impression that (the US) opinion was the only correct one and unchallengeable emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union and has in the end led the United States into economic blunders,” Medvedev said.

The formulation to highlight the lack of counter-balance to US hegemony on the world stage and clearly projects Moscow’s former power into that absence.