Hopes have been high for the coming G20 summit to be held in London, at least so for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who has been repeatedly wording "global New Deal" out of it, but for his German counterpart, visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the hope seems to be tuned down, a little.

Though Merkel did not give a flat rejection to the new stimulus package as has been called by British and U.S. governments, what she said at the joint press conference on Saturday seemed to be watering down the stimulus package.

The German leader said Germany had already had its stimulus package and would concentrate instead on delivering the policies.

Merkel, who came to London on Friday for her two-day visit, said what Germany needed was to help build a better regulatory system to prevent future crisis and let the banks and enterprises play their roles.

The German chancellor said her country was different from either the United States or Britain in pension and employment and Germany needed to cut the red tapes so as to promote its export and stabilize its economy.

Saying that she was optimistic about reaching agreements at next month's G20 summit in London, Merkel noted that world leaders should put together financial packages that "benefit both national and international economies."

Brown, who has repeatedly emphasized a "global New Deal" for the G20 summit against the current crisis, said that "each country can help the other by announcing similar financial measures," apparently tuning down his high hope for a coordinated action at the summit.

Brown said Germany and Britain had already had their "biggest stimulus packages in history," which might be interpreted by some as his reluctance in accepting Germany's refusal to have more stimulus packages.

But the British prime minister said that a bad bank in one country could harm a good bank in another, insisting that in such a globalized economy today there should be efforts to fight the crisis on both national and international levels.

Brown said that "countries will be agreeing together about what we are going to do in the future, both in fiscal and monetary policy and in the regulatory system," and "we are setting a path for the G20 where one by one we reach agreement for the big issues in the future."

In fact, Merkel has been rejecting calls for a new stimulus package despite the pressure from the United States and Britain.

Hours before she left for London on Friday, the German leader said that "we do not think much of the idea of a new package of measures to underpin the economy."

Difference turned all the more apparent ahead of the G20 finance minister meeting near London, with the United States, Britain and Japan favoring more stimulus spending, while European leaders focusing more on tougher regulations as the best way out of the current global economic crisis.

One day earlier on Thursday, Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at a joint press conference in Berlin that "Germany and France will send a common signal at this summit."

That signal, in a direct rebuttal to U.S. calls for more spending, was "spending even more is not the issue, the issue is to put in place a regulatory system to prevent the economic catastrophe that the world is experiencing from being repeated."

European countries insisted that their stimulus packages were already enough and the more important thing was to deliver such packages and had regulatory measures in place against similar crisis from erupting out of the Anglo-Saxon capitalism.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who enacted a 787 billion-U.S. dollar stimulus bill last month, seemed to take a step back from his support of more stimulus on the European, indicating that the United States was not attending the G20 to negotiate a "specific commitment" on the economy.

Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs said "we are not going to negotiate some specific economic percentage or commitment," insisting instead "we must manage and overcome the current economic crisis, and take steps to prevent future crisis from happening to the global economy."

Though the summit might not end up like what a British expert put as "going to achieve nothing," what the White House has said recently, and what Brown said at his joint press conference with Merkel, showed that leaders across the Atlantic were trying to downplay the upcoming G20 meeting.

The meeting might be successful in bringing leaders together to address such issues concerning the "shadow banks" and tax havens within the scope of global financial regulation system as well as trade issues, but high hope for a coordinated action for more stimulus spending is apparently tuning down.

While Brown said that "each country can help the other by announcing similar financial measures," Chancellor Alistair Darling was also trying to manage expectations ahead of the April 2 summit, as he said "we should not expect to achieve complete consensus overnight."

Darling said on Friday, the first day of a closed-door meeting of the G20 finance ministers, that "it is important to be realistic about what could be achieved at the next month G20 summit."