The International Monetary Fund has warned that leading nations need to embrace bold policy steps to accelerate a still-modest and fragile global economic recovery. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said that as the world still struggles to emerge from the 2008 financial crisis, economies are under threat from tensions involving Ukraine and Russia to inaction in countries that should be driving growth. Ms. Lagarde said, the European Central Bank should consider lowering interest rates further and using unconventional policies to support growth and fight inflation that is too low.Her comments came in a speech previewing next week's meetings of global finance officials in Washington. The 188-nation IMF and its sister lending organisation, the World Bank, will hold their spring policy meetings.In advance of those weekend discussions, finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 leading economic powers will also meet. In her remarks, Ms. Lagarde noted that the G-20 finance officials in a February meeting in Australia had committed to pursuing policies that would boost global GDP by more than 2 trillion US Dollars over the coming five years. She said, if the G-20 countries can do so, it would place the global economy on a substantially different and better trajectory from today.Ms. Lagarde said, she thinks the global economy is turning the corner from the Great Recession of 2007-2009, but she said overall growth remains too slow and weak. She warned that the recovery could be put at risk by the wrong policy decisions and by rising geopolitical tensions.