DAVOS: Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso pledged 1.5 trillion yen ($17 billion) in aid to other Asian countries yesterday as leaders wrapped up the Davos forum after four days of agonizing about the world economy.

The initiative by Japan, aimed at funding infrastructure projects to boost economic growth in its Asian neighbors, capped a week of gloomy talks about how to jumpstart the world economy and put an end to the financial crisis.

“We must admit that the year 2009 opened on a very somber note,” Aso told delegates here during a six-hour trip to the Swiss ski mountain that hosts the World Economic Forum each year.

The final day was marked by demonstrations in Davos and Geneva where hundreds gathered to express their anger at the elite business and political chiefs here who are blamed by many for the crisis.

Police in Geneva used tear gas after being pelted with bottles and fireworks as demonstrators tried to stage a march through the city centre that had been banned by local authorities.

In Davos, a group of protestors walked through the village, holding a giant banner that read “You Are The Crisis.” Another small group chanting “No To the WEF” threw fake blood on security barriers and ripped down sheeting on the perimeter.

Inside the congress center, top trade ministers met yesterday and said there was a “sound basis” for agreeing a new global free trade pact this year amid growing fears about protectionism as the economic crisis bites.

Head of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, warned that trade was “already a casualty” of the global slowdown, with sharp falls in trade flows exacerbating unemployment.

Ministers have been struggling to agree a trade deal since talks were launched in Doha in 2001. Supporters hope a deal can be quickly agreed to send a signal of support for globalization.

Fear of protectionism has stalked this year’s Davos meeting, with leaders and business officials stressing the danger that the next phase of the economic crisis could be government policies that crimp trade.

Climate change, energy shortages, as well as water and food insecurity, featured on a long list of issues facing policymakers in addition to battling recessions and preventing banking collapses.

The defining moments of Davos 2009 were provided by an explosive debate on the Middle East and the sight of the prime ministers of Russia and China lecturing the United States on its past economic mismanagement.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said America’s voracious appetite for debt and “blind pursuit of profit” had led to the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Putin reminded his audience that “American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasized the US economy’s fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects.”

Elsewhere, there was widespread acceptance that the excesses of the last several years had been unsustainable and reckless, but few apologies — largely because many of the bankers who were stars here in previous years stayed away.

“I think there are some people who believed that they would find bankers dressed in sackcloth and ashes, full of contrition,” South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel told AFP. “Life doesn’t work like that.”

Regulators were blamed for not spotting the crisis and many leaders backed new global institutions to prevent the events of the last 12 months repeating themselves.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown argued Friday for tougher control of the international economy.