Ottawa: Group of Seven (G7) Finance Ministers were gathering on February 8 in snow- blanketed Ottawa to fan faint sparks of recovery in the shaken world economy while dousing the flames of recession in Japan and financial crisis in Argentina.

The meeting, starting with a lobster salad and veal dinner at the Parliament building in Ottawa and followed by talks on February 9 at the Willson House mansion by frozen Meech Lake in nearby Quebec, is expected to deliver a cautiously optimistic communiqué at its conclusion.

Police reserved a space for anti-globalisation protesters in a parking lot near the lake, saying they expected up to 50 people on February 9, a far cry from the tens of thousands who have disrupted high-powered financial meetings from Seattle, Washington, to Genoa, Italy.

Five months after the September 11 attacks pounded an already-feeble world economy, the signals remained mixed, Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin said at a news conference.

"The situation in Japan is, as we all know, one of some difficulty," Martin said after a meeting with US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

"Europe is beginning to look a little better, although the situation in Germany continues to be unusually slow," he said, noting however that Germany expected a recovery in the second half of this year.

"The signals in America are a bit more optimistic," he said.

"For our part, the United States has put the worst part of the economic slowdown behind us," he said.

He expected the Finance Ministers and Central Bank chiefs to focus on how each G7 partner, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States can contribute to world growth.