Global leaders say 'keep trading'

If nations instead choose to barricade their economies behind new commercial barriers, they risk making the global economic crisis even worse, leaders said.

"Trade is the best economic stimulus," said Doris Leuthard, the Swiss economics minister who hosted trade chiefs from the world's most powerful countries on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

Their talks, however, offered no renewed hopes for a long-awaited deal in the Doha round of trade talks that many see as a necessary bulwark against the threat of economic protectionism, which devastated the world during the Great Depression.

Hundreds of anti-capitalist, anti-globalization protesters in Geneva violently rebutted the free trade argument, lobbing bottles at riot police, who responded with tear gas and water cannons. The Geneva protest - about five hours by train from the gathering of 2,500 business and political leaders in Davos - had been peaceful until police blocked a crowd from entering the city centre.

At a smaller protest in Davos, police said 120 people marched through the town, and a few lobbed snowballs.

Those events went unnoticed in the forum's last full day. Instead, CEOs, company chairmen and politicians turned their attention to the future of free trade, which many said was under threat as countries deal with rising unemployment, financial instability and recessions - real or anticipated.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said these pressures were no reason to recoil from free trade, and called co-operation the only path forward.

"This is not like the 1930s. The world can come together," he said. "This is a global banking crisis, and you've got to deal with it for what it is, a global banking crisis."

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said his country would do its part: "We will resolutely fight protectionism."