The World Bank president has said that 2009 is turning into "a very dangerous year" for the economy.

Robert Zoellick also warned G20 members against protectionist policies, ahead of a G20 finance ministers' meeting in the United Kingdom on how to tackle the economic downturn.

"If the leaders feel they are running out of constructive tools, they might start to point fingers and take protectionist and isolationist actions and those are the negative spiral of events you saw in the [19]30s", Zoellick said on Friday.

He spoke to reporters a day after warning that growth in the world economy was likely to fall by up to two per cent this year - the first contraction since the second world war. 

The G20 finance ministers are gathering in Horsham, outside London, on Saturday to lay the groundwork for a G20 heads of state summit on April 2.

Zoellick said that governments may have to provide fiscal stimulus into 2010, but stressed that such action should come "within a framework of fiscal sustainability".

Finance ministers and central bank leaders from the United States and Europe are divided on whether stimulus packages or tighter regulation of the finance sector should be the way forward.

Conflicting statements made in the last week suggest the meeting on Saturday could be hampered by disagreements.

While the US wants a co-ordinated international stimulus to fight the slowdown, some European leaders favour tightening regulation of markets and institutions.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said on Friday that she did not favour a new package of economic stimulus measures.

Timothy Geithner, the US treasury secretary, said on Wednesday that he
would recommend the G20 nations to support "substantially increasing emergency IMF resources" and called for them to lend to countries hit hard by the financial crisis.