G20 deal hopes in the balance

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Mr Obama, backed by the Prime Minister, has been calling for the world's 20 leading economies to co-operate in a twin-pronged response to the world recession, using fiscal stimulus packages to boost demand while also reforming international financial regulation.

Mr Brown has been talking up the prospect of securing G20 support for a co-ordinated package of action, which some commentators believe would provide him with cover for a second UK stimulus in the form of increased state spending or tax cuts in the April 22 Budget.

But France and Germany set their faces firmly against further injections of cash into their economies.

And Mr Obama's spokesman appeared to accept that a deal was unlikely at the April 2 summit, telling reporters that the US President was not seeking to negotiate "specific commitments".

Finance ministers from the G20 countries will arrive in the UK ahead of a meeting in Sussex on Saturday at which they will set out the policy gaps remaining to be bridged if any sort of agreement is to be reached at the summit.

And German Chancellor Angela Merkel will fly in to London for potentially awkward talks with Mr Brown.

Ms Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have made clear that they have no desire to add to their own fiscal stimulus packages, and believe that the G20 should focus instead on tighter regulation of financial markets to prevent a repeat of the current slump.

At a joint press conference following talks in Berlin, Ms Merkel said the two countries would send "a common signal" at the summit: "The issue is not spending even more but to put in place a regulatory system to prevent the economic catastrophe that the world is experiencing from being repeated."

Asked how the President would respond to the Franco-German stance, Mr Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters: "We're not going to negotiate some specific economic percentage or commitment, but continue to talk about the notion that... it is important that the world act together in growing our economy, as well as that we together take steps to ensure that the crisis doesn't happen again."