The International Monetary Fund said that it needs greater powers to anticipate and handle any future economic crisis, even as protesters facing police water cannons and tear gas claimed the fund was merely helping rich countries.

The IMF has been designated to oversee the global economy and avoid risky imbalances, but the fund has warned that it will need a broader reach to tackle some issues effectively.

"This crisis had very little to do with current accounts and currency movements, the traditional focus of the Fund's attention," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's managing director.

"In an era of high-volume and fast-moving capital flows that can extend to every corner of the world, we need a broader mandate," he said at the plenary session of the annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. Strauss-Kahn said the IMF's mandate needed review, assessing all policies that affect global economic stability.

The conference center hosting the meetings was heavily guarded, and protesters were kept well away from the site. In a nearby shopping district, though, hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators skirmished with police and some masked protesters shattered the windows of a McDonald's restaurant and several Turkish and foreign banks.

• Turkish police fire tear gas on IMF protesters