国际英语新闻：Was anything achieved at the IMF meeting?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over the weekend vowed to heighten international cooperation on sustaining the global economic recovery, details on how it would do so were hazy, calling into question whether any achievements were made.

Nevertheless, IMF officials expressed optimism over global cooperation on the recovery -- billing that as a major achievement in and of itself -- as some had feared cooperation has been declining since last year.

"Thousands of people have flown in from all over the world for these meetings, and there' s been no movement of any significance on any issues of significance," said Mark Fried, spokesman for Oxfam, a confederation of more than a dozen organizations working against poverty in nearly 100 countries.

"There' s been a fight about currencies, and developing countries seem to have been forgotten. And hard decisions about reforming the way the IMF does business have been deterred," he said.

IMF voiceS OPTIMISM

While the recovery is moving ahead, it remains fragile and occurring at a faster clip in developing countries than in advanced economies, and the fund has called for cross border cooperation to sustain it, the IMF said.

While unity over the issue seemed to be fraying in recent months, IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Saturday voiced optimism over the level of cooperation at this weekend' s annual summit, saying that finance ministers from around the globe agreed on the need to work together in a bid to sustain the recovery.

"What I have realized during this annual meeting is...(that) all the ministers agree with this idea that the fund is right...that (participants) need to go ahead with cooperation, because the economy is a globalized economy," he said at a press briefing.

"Because everybody realizes that there is no single solution that you can apply in your country without having a plan at the global level," he said.