PARIS "Everyone must do their bit" to get the global economy back on its feet, French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday, in a retort to U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill who a day earlier had urged Europe and Japan to pull their weight in combatting the current slowdown.

"Everyone must do their bit," Fabius said in a statement released to AFP on the eve of a one-day meeting of G7 finance ministers in Rome.

"The United States must develop their domestic savings. Japan must implement indispensable structural reforms and combat deflation," the minister said.

As for Europe, it must nurture domestic demand, bring down inflation "and create a policy mix which will create the conditions for strong and sustainable growth," he continued.

On Thursday, U.S. Treasury Secretary O'Neill had said that Europe and Japan "need to play a locomotive role" along with the U.S. in spurring global growth.

Americans were "doing our part to contribute to strong and stable growth worldwide," O'Neill said.

But because of the interlocking nature of the global economy, the two other main economic regions had to play their part as well.

"I do think we are all tied together," he said, adding that he was looking forward to hearing from his G7 counterparts about their own steps to raise growth toward potential.

Fabius retorted Friday that the main reason behind the global slump was the slowdown in the U.S. and high oil prices.

Global economic growth is slowing, but there is no reason to be unduly pessimistic, German Finance Minister Hans Eichel said.

"There are no grounds to succumb to pessimism," Eichel told journalists at a press briefing ahead of a one-day meeting of G7 finance ministers here.

"What we're seeing in the euro area is a flattening out of growth," Eichel said.

"I don't want to be accused to prettying things up. But if half of economic policy is psychology, it's important to see things for what they really are. That's slower growth, but it's growth nevertheless."

Germany in particular has seen an almost unending flow of weak economic data recently, sparking talk that the euro zone's biggest economy was on the verge of recession.

But Eichel rejected such suggestions as "complete nonsense."

In fact, the first tentative positive signals were being seen, with inflation apparently already beginning to come down and an unexpected surge in orders for the country's key manufacturing sector, the minister argued.

The global economy "has not reached its bottom," British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said Saturday ahead of a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Rome.

"There are risks in the world economy at the moment. The world economy has not reached its bottom," he told BBC radio ahead of Saturday's one-day meeting, which he was expected to attend.

"It is in many ways far more severe than we expected a few months ago because it has spread from America in particular to Germany and of course we have no growth at all in Japan," Brown said.

"We must recognize that this is a global problem," Brown said, after U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's comments on Thursday suggesting that Europe and Japan also had to play a part in spurring global growth.

"America of course has reduced interest rates sharply, Japan has reduced interest rates but must now engage in economic reform," the finance minister told the BBC.

"Europe too must engage in economic reform," he continued. "I believe we have got to be proactive. Each continent must play its part in dealing with the effects of what is a global downturn."

Britain's finance minister praised the country's efforts to prepare for recession but said that every country would be at risk.

"Of course, if the world economy is growing far more slowly, and of course, if it is affecting Europe as it affected America, then no country and no continent can be insulated," he said.