WASHINGTON -- The Group of 20 nations' proposal to tackle global imbalances through a peer-review process will require a sea change in international relations to succeed, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said yesterday.

Mr. Zoellick called the peer-review framework a "good start," in remarks he made to Johns Hopkins University's graduate school for international studies. "But the peer review will require a new level of international cooperation and coordination, including a new willingness to take the findings of global monitoring seriously," he said.

The new peer-review process is aimed at trends that have turned the global economy upside down in some respects. The primary global imbalance is that countries such as China, Japan and Germany have geared their economies to send exports to the United States. But, after years of overspending on imported goods, the U.S. savings rate fell to record low levels.

Economists say the challenge for policy makers is to move the U.S. savings rate higher though fiscal measures, while the exporting countries develop a domestic market for their goods.

At the summit in Pittsburgh, President Barack Obama proposed the new peer-review framework that the other 19 countries adopted. Under his peer-review plan, the G-20 countries will have to put forward policies to reduce global imbalances. They will gather under the IMF umbrella to discuss progress, with the IMF serving as referee.

Mr. Zoellick said this review process will have to have teeth. "Peer review will need to be peer pressure," he said. "You can try to create a structure that puts pressure on people. Where you have tensions, what you can hope to do is push people to the messy process of accommodating, compromising," he said.

Peer-review program details still must be hammered out before it can get off the ground.

Analysts' initial reaction tended toward skepticism, noting that the peer process has been tried in the past, but has foundered. Believing that peer-review programs would work is "the triumph of hope over experience," said former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson.

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