Leaders from Latin America, Europe and the United States on Saturday appealed for preventing the economic recession from becoming a social crisis and urged a bigger role of governments in addressing the financial crisis.

The plea was made on the one-day Progressive Governance Summit held in the Chilean resort city of Vina del Mar.

"It can not be avoided the economic recession to be transformed into a social recession if it is not possible to achieve policies to restart the growth, to reinforce the social protection and to stimulate the creation of employments," the leaders said in their final declaration.

In the declaration signed on Saturday, the leaders also pleaded to "reform the domestic regulation of the financial institutions and to have international coordination in those regulations."

All the leaders agreed on the need of "building the base of a new economy allowing prosperity to be widely shared."

"The countries will take measures to boost the economy and to take coordinate actions for a balances and sustained recovery," said the leaders.

They also noted that the international financial institutions can play an important role to prevent the disastrous economic consequences for the emerging and developing countries.

According to the declaration, the leaders also agreed on the urgency of a coordinated answer to the climate change with an expansion of the investments on clean energies.

The leaders also discussed ways to avoid protectionism and the need of concluding the Doha Round talks.

Among the attendants of the summit were Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Sivla, Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Norwegian Premier Jens Stoltenberg, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and US Vice President Joseph Biden.

(Xinhua News Agency March 29, 2009)