April 1 (Bloomberg) -- France and Germany aren’t satisfied with a Group of 20 draft statement on resolving the financial crisis and are pushing leaders attending tomorrow’s summit for more international regulation, President Nicolas Sarkozy said.

“In the current state of things, the projects don’t suit France, or Germany,” Sarkozy told Europe1 radio, citing a conversation he had with German Chancellor Angela Merkel late yesterday. “No agreement is secured. I know by experience that we will need to fight until the last minute.”

Sarkozy said he wouldn’t “associate” himself with a meeting “that would end in false compromises, not dealing with the problems that keep us busy.” French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde yesterday said Sarkozy would walk out of the summit if his push for stricter financial regulation is rebuffed. Sarkozy said today he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Failure to find an international consensus would deal a blow to the summit in London that aims to find ways to end the global recession and avoid a repeat of the financial crisis that caused it. France has resisted U.S. calls to boost fiscal stimulus, while pushing for tighter controls on tax havens, executive compensation and hedge funds.

“At international conferences it’s most sensible to partake in a concentrated way and not to leave the negotiating table,” Thomas Steg, a German government spokesman, told reporters in Berlin today. He called the “empty chair” practice “perhaps not the correct guiding principle.”

Discord ‘Overstated’

President Barack Obama today called reports of disagreement in the G-20 “vastly overstated.” The G-20 brings together industrialized nations and emerging countries including China, India and Brazil.

The French president said it would be “unacceptable” not to have concrete decisions implemented “in days or a few weeks.”

“We want clear precision of what a tax haven is, not a place where you pay few taxes, but a place that doesn’t give information on the origin of funds,” Sarkozy said. “We want one or several lists of financial centers that don’t cooperate with regard to” the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development criteria.

“Some” G-20 members are currently “less enthusiastic about engaging in regulation of tax havens,” Sarkozy said. China’s “exact” position has yet to be assessed, because of the “interests of Hong Kong, Macau, and maybe Singapore.”

Sarkozy said he was encouraged by Obama’s calls for more transparency on tax havens.

Controlling Compensation

“It’s fantastic to have a dynamic, young U.S. president” who “wants change,” Sarkozy said. The administration of his predecessor, George W. Bush, was less keen on change, he said.

Banks worldwide should refuse to work with non-cooperative jurisdictions, the French president said. Compensation in the global financial services industry must be controlled to avoid a repeat of excessive risk taking, while credit rating companies and hedge funds should be supervised, he added.

“Sixty-two percent of hedge funds -- these aggressive speculative funds that have bought companies around the world, sold them in pieces, made considerable capital gains and became indebted to buy them at any price -- are based in tax havens,” Sarkozy said.

Later in the interview, Sarkozy said the French economy may exit the crisis in “several months.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Sandrine Rastello in Paris at srastello@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 1, 2009 10:21 EDT