By Roland Jackson

LONDON - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will call Monday for stronger commercial links with emerging economic giants China and India to help the nation emerge from a painful recession.

Brown, addressing the annual London gathering of the Confederation of British Industry, was also to announce an international investment conference to be held early next year, according to an advance copy of his speech.

The CBI, Britain's biggest employers' organisation which represents about 240,000 companies, will focus this year on how businesses can recover from the country's longest recession on record.

Brown was to unveil a "new growth strategy" at the event that will also feature opposition Conservative leader David Cameron, tipped to be the next prime minister, and International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

"Today we have over 400 Chinese companies now operating in Britain. In our new growth strategy, I want not just hundreds but thousands of Chinese companies in Britain and British companies in China," Brown was to say.

"I know that we will soon sign new strategic partnerships with India. Trade relations with the United States are strong.

"So we need an outward-facing Britain, attracting inward investment and sustaining high value added jobs.

"And to go for growth in Britain - we must also go for growth in Europe," he was to say at the event, which the CBI has billed "Routes to Recovery".

In addition, Brown was set to announce plans for a new London conference that will seek to attract more foreign investors.

"As an outward-looking nation seeking sustainable growth in a world where trade is set to increase rapidly, a priority must be to attract inward investment - and we should be proud to show our strengths."

"That's why today I am announcing an international investment conference in London which I will host early next year - inviting British and foreign investors to come and see what Britain can offer the world." Other speakers at the one-day CBI meeting will include Marks and Spencer boss Stuart Rose and Royal Bank of Scotland head Stephen Hester, as well as Jeffrey Kindler, chief of US drugs giant Pfizer.

The worst global crisis since the 1930s has hammered consumer demand, ramped up unemployment and ravaged manufacturing in Britain.

Businesses have also been blighted by the credit crunch as the struggling banking sector has tightened lending criteria, despite record low interest rates from the Bank of England.

Separately on Monday, the CBI said British business must reshape the way it works as a consequence of the recession, with innovative lending practices and commercial models emerging.

The CBI said in a key report, published to coincide with the meeting, that the recession and credit crunch had "become the catalysts for a new era."

The business lobbying group is meanwhile calling on the government to sort out ballooning debt and extend its car scrappage scheme to safeguard valuable automaking jobs.

Britain faces a general election by next June and ahead of the polls, one of the biggest headaches facing the government is how best to fix the dire state of the nation's public finances.

Brown's Labour Party is tipped to lose to Cameron's Conservatives. Britain's recession, which began in the second quarter of 2008, is officially the country's longest since records began. The economy has now contracted for six quarters in a row.

The nation is also the only major power still officially in recession after the eurozone, France, Germany, Japan and the United States all emerged from the global downturn.