KEY POINTS:
A surprise approach from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has led to her having a phone conversation with Finance Minister Michael Cullen about the global financial crisis as the world's biggest economies prepare to hold a crucial meeting.
Dr Cullen took a break from the campaign trail at around 11.45am yesterday to speak to Dr Rice by telephone as she sought views ahead of the Group of 20 meeting to be held in Washington on November 15.
The meeting is viewed as potentially pivotal in deciding what more can be done to address the crisis.
The Herald understands the US State Department approached Dr Cullen's office seeking the conversation and Dr Cullen took the call while travelling from Auckland to Rotorua.
Earlier in the morning Dr Cullen told the Herald that the conversation was initiated by the US and it emphasised again how much better the relationship between the two countries had become.
"And a lot of that is down to Dr Rice, I think," Dr Cullen said.
Dr Rice visited New Zealand in July and her positive rapport with now suspended Foreign Minister Winston Peters has been a feature of the warming relationship.
Dr Cullen said he thought the Secretary of State was concerned about where the G20 meeting left the US' friends not in the grouping.
"I think she just wants to reach out to friends like New Zealand," he said.
"So she just wants to have a bit of a call, and tell us what their ambitions are for the meeting, and I just want to say 'well, there's a few things that we'd like to just have put on the agenda'."
Dr Cullen said he wanted to thank the US Administration for what it had done to lead the Western world in propping up the financial sector.
He also wanted to emphasise that the short-term stop-gap measures being taken at the moment weren't really sustainable in the long term.
The short-term arrangements to combat the crisis were fraught with dangers and would become difficult to sustain, he suggested.
"There's also the need, I think, for greater international co-operation around prudential regulation - I think that's been one of the issues in a lot of this," Dr Cullen said. "So just how do we get that better co-operation, and maybe better alignment between prudential regulation around the world?"
The G20 leaders scheduled to meet in Washington include those from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
