The Associated PressPublished: October 10, 2008

ROME: Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Friday that world leaders might consider suspending stock markets in response to the financial meltdown.

Berlusconi told a press conference in Naples that EU leaders may hold a summit on the crisis Sunday in Paris. He also said leaders from the Group of Eight also were considering a summit in the coming days.

The solutions to the crisis will have to be "global and innovative," Berlusconi said. "There is talk of suspending the markets" while international financial rules are "rewritten."

He stressed that suspending trading was an "hypothesis," and that nothing had yet been decided.

Also on Friday, Italy's stock market regulator widened a monthlong ban on short selling to include all shares traded in the country.

The measure bans the common practice of selling borrowed shares in hopes of buying them at a lower price and will be in effect until Oct. 31. Last week the regulator had banned short-selling bank and insurance company stocks.

The ban aims to help stop the free fall of the Milan Stock Exchange, which along with other global markets has been suffering heavy losses in the wake of the U.S. financial crisis.

The benchmark S&P/Mib index was down 4.5 percent Friday afternoon.

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