UK PRIME minister Gordon Brown has accused other countries of failing to heed his warnings that the world needed tougher regulation to avert a worldwide financial crisis.

He said "the time has now come" to implement his plan for enhanced global financial regulation that he would set out at the UN in New York this week.

The British prime minister has long been an advocate of an improved early warning system for impending transnational crises and for improved regulatory supervision of big international banks.

However, his suggestion in a BBC television interview that he foresaw the looming problem and others ignored the warning signs are likely to jar in other capitals, including Washington.

"I've been pressing for some years, and I wish I could have persuaded other countries to do what I wanted, and that was to create a global system of financial regulation," Mr Brown said. "The world is changing very fast, but the governance of the global financial system has not caught up with it. And that's what's got to change."

Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, has vented public frustration at the US and UK governments' previous opposition to the stronger regulation of financial markets.

The German chancellor used a weekend appearance at an election rally in Austria to argue that Washington and London had placed too much faith in markets' ability to regulate themselves - in spite of warnings by Berlin.

"Now America and Great Britain are also saying yes, we need more transparency, we need better standards for rating agencies," she told members of Austria's People's Party.

Her comments reflected the lingering bitterness felt in Berlin since UK and US opposition stymied German plans for the stronger policing of the hedge fund industry proposed at the Berlin-hosted summit of G7 industrial nations in June, 2007 - just months before the credit crisis.

The events of the past week have strengthened continental European politicians' conviction that the financial market turmoil was largely created in the US - and that the concerns they expressed in the past were warranted.

In coming days, European policymakers are likely to call for the global review of regulatory standards to be accelerated.

Peer Steinbrück, the German finance minister, said yesterday that there should be greater international regulation of financial markets. - (Financial Times service)