WASHINGTON -- World economic chiefs grappled to find a unified message on the global economy as they wrapped up meetings here with a series of pledges to help struggling nations and create more growth engines in the advanced economies.

"We of course discussed a lot about the global economy, and I was encouraged because there was no doom and gloom, but a differentiated analysis and some realistic confidence that the recovery would continue," IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler said Sunday after the annual meetings of the 184-member International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn added, "I share the sense of optimism about the future, not wild optimism, but not wild pessimism. "We are left with a number of things to do ... we should stop philosphizing and get on with our respective tasks."

To ensure recovery the finance ministers and central bank governors called for: -- Japan to mop up the bad debts weighing on its banking system.

-- Europe to reform its labor markets.

-- The United States to clean up corporate boardrooms.

-- Plans for new bankruptcy-style system to deal with countries in debt crises, such as Argentina.

Meanwhile, Japan vowed yet again Sunday to speed its campaign to rid the banking system of a mountain of bad loans, but world economic chiefs were left puzzled about its plans to do so.

"We will accelerate the disposal of non-performing loans based on a strict evaluation of assets," Bank of Japan Governor Masaru Hayami said at an IMF and World Bank gathering in which Japan's ailing economy and its banking system were highlighted.

Tokyo was conducting a special inspection to measure the scale of bad loans extended by its banks, he said.

The official Japanese figures on bad loans are widely viewed with skepticism. Experts, including those at the International Monetary Fund, believe they underestimate the size of the problem.

But even the official figures paint a grim picture, saying Japanese banks are weighed down by bad loans amounting to 43.2 trillion yen ($353 billion). This makes them reluctant to lend money, depressing economic activity, and thus creating more bad loans to replace those being written off.

After a weekend of meetings among the 184 members of the IMF and their colleagues at the World Bank, however, the overwhelming impression from the Japanese team was one of confusion rather than determination.

Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa appeared uncertain whether he had discussed the matter in a meeting Friday with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.