The third leg of the global strategic triangle — Asia-Europe relations — has always been the weakest of the three. The Asia Europe Meeting, otherwise known as ASEM, was designed to remedy that shortcoming. The need for meaningful dialogue between the two poles has become even more important as the world reels from the recent financial crisis. At a meeting last weekend in Beijing, leaders from Asia and Europe endorsed revision of global financial rules. Turning that consensus into concrete measures, however, remains a challenging assignment.

The 45 heads of state who joined the seventh ASEM meeting recognized "the need to improve the supervision and regulation of all financial actors, in particular their accountability" and pledged "to undertake effective and comprehensive reform of the international monetary and financial systems." Their joint statement declared that "The market and regulatory failures that have led to this crisis must be addressed as a matter of urgency."

But recognizing a crisis is never the hard part: Fixing it and preventing future occurrences is. The ASEM meeting is not designed to craft those solutions. The burden for that falls on a Nov. 15 meeting hosted by U.S. President George W. Bush, and consensus on the appropriate measures to adopt will be hard to come by, even as stock markets continue their slide and financial institutions lurch.

Asian and European leaders have agreed among themselves that the best answer is greater supervision of global financial markets. That is the approach advocated by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, who has been in front of calls for reform of the international regulatory institutions set up after World War II. That call resonates with Asian leaders, who see their own economies as innocent victims of the excess, speculation and greed that germinated in the U.S. Europeans have pushed for more bank supervision, tighter regulation of hedge funds and credit rating companies, and changes in how the International Monetary Fund does its business.

Mr. Bush is more circumspect about change. He wants the leaders who will join him in Washington to focus on "the fundamentals of long-term economic growth: free markets, free enterprise and free trade." For the U.S. president, those principles will then provide the framework for the specific solutions pursued by each country. Finding the appropriate balance between stricter regulation and the freedoms Mr. Bush prefers to emphasize will not be easy. Moreover, the discussions will also likely include currency alignments, another topic upon which participants may be able to agree in principle but will find it hard to come up with specific measures.

Any eventual agreement is likely to focus on the role of the IMF. The organization is already considering an emergency program that would double borrowing limits for members and waive the usual demand for economic austerity measures. For the most part, there seems to be consensus that the IMF needs to be quick and flexible. The fund's reaction to the 1997 Asian financial crisis highlighted the damage that can be done when it acts without regard to a country's particular economic circumstances. The U.S. response to its own meltdown makes a mockery of the austerity packages the IMF forced on Asian recipients in its "one size fits all" approach.

The IMF may have some help. Prior to the ASEM get-together, 13 Asian nations — the 10 Southeast Asia nations along with Japan, China and South Korea — agreed to set up an $80 billion fund that would provide liquidity in the case of a crisis. The fund was first suggested some months ago and would build upon the Chiang Mai Initiative, under which the 13 countries provide funds to each other through bilateral currency swaps. The three big countries would provide 80 percent of the fund, which will be in place by next June; the 10 ASEAN countries will provide the rest.

This initiative resembles the Asian Monetary Fund that was considered during the 1997-98 crisis and was subsequently shot down by the U.S. There were no objections to the proposal this time around, a reflection of the region's growing clout, its substantial monetary reserves and the desire to build as many shock absorbers into the system as possible.

The financial crisis is spreading around the world, and its impact will intensify as it hits the real economy. By one estimate the Group of Seven leading industrialized economies will shrink 1.1 percent as a whole next year, the worst performance since the 1930s. That will hurt poor nations whose exports to developed nations fuel their own growth. Worse, they do not have Asia's riches as a buffer. They may see many of the meager gains of recent years undone.

Fortunately for them, they will not have to depend on the developed world's charity to see action: The scale of this crisis means that developing nations will anyhow take action to help themselves.