WASHINGTON, Oct 6, 2008 (AFP) - World Bank president Robert Zoellick said Monday that the current financial turmoil highlighted the need for a 'new multilateralism' to replace outdated structures.

Describing the financial turmoil of this year as a 'wake-up call,' Zoellick said the world needed to look beyond resolving the current crisis to the underlying role of multilateral institutions.

'We will need a new multilateral network for a new global economy,' Zoellick said in a speech ahead of the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank this weekend in Washington.

He also urged reform of the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Zoellick said the IMF's early warning system for the global economy should be strengthened, 'focused on crisis prevention and not just crisis resolution.'

The head of the 185-nation development lender said that economic multilateralism must be redefined beyond a traditional focus on finance and trade.

'Today, energy, climate change, and stabilizing fragile and post-conflict states are economic issues,' he said in a speech to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.

'They are already part of the international security and environmental dialogue. They must be the concern of economic multilateralism as well.'

Multilateral structures, based on mid-20th century models, have not kept pace with the changes wrought by today's globalization and markets, he said.

Zoellick suggested that the Group of Seven advanced economies should be turned into a steering group that includes rising economies.

'The G7 is not working. We need a better group for a different time,' he said.

'For financial and economic cooperation, we should consider a new steering group including Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the current G7.'

Such a group would represent 56 percent of the world's population and 70 percent of global economic output, he noted.

'But this steering group would not be a G14. We will not create a new world simply by remaking the old,' he said.

'It should be numberless, flexible, and over time, it could evolve. Others may be added, especially if their rising influence is matched by a willingness to help shoulder responsibilities.

Zoellick comments came ahead of Friday's meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States in Washington.

In sharp criticism of the G7, Zoellick said it had lost it valuable role coordinating policy in recent decades.

'The (G7) economic summits long ago placed a priority on ceremony over policy,' he said.

'I still harbor hope that the meetings of finance ministers will offer a multilateral navigator in dealing with global financial and economic problems. But the forum falls far short of the need,' said the head of the anti-poverty development lender.

For the WTO, whose Doha Round of international trade talks has virtually collapsed, Zoellick suggested a shift from negotiations to a development plan.

'A new trade facilitation and development agenda puts the self-interest of lowering costs of trading to work for a multilateral interest of encouraging more integration, efficiencies, and opportunities -- meaning, more jobs, more growth, less poverty,' he said.