Cameron arrives in Seoul for G20

Nations gathering in South Korea for the G20 summit are finding it hard to break a deadlock on how to fix problems plaguing the world economy.

President Barack Obama insisted that a strong US is crucial for a wider international recovery. in a letter to the group he warned that the US cannot remain a profligate consumer using borrowed money, and needs other countries to pull their weight to fix the world economy.

The two-day summit hopes to tackle deeply sensitive issues that include state manipulation of currencies, trade gaps, protectionism and strengthening regulation of banks.

"The most important thing that the United State can do for the world economy is to grow, because we continue to be the world's largest market and a huge engine for all other countries to grow," Obama said at a news conference.

Yet compromise among G20 countries has looked difficult in recent weeks. It is divided between those like the US that see the top priority as getting China to let its currency rise and those irate over US Federal Reserve plans to pump 600 billion dollars of new money into the sluggish American economy, effectively devaluing the dollar.

Over the past two days, government ministers and senior G20 officials have laboured to hammer out a substantive joint statement to be issued at the end of the summit on Friday.