financial crisis, regained its footing in 1999 and will grow this year at the fastest pace in more than a decade, the International Monetary Fund forecast yesterday.

But the IMF also cautioned that a sudden plunge in the US stock market and a "hard landing'' for the US economy is one of the leading risks to its forecast.

The release of the IMF's economic outlook marked the start of several days of preliminary events leading to the formal opening of the IMF and World Bank's spring meetings Sunday. Thousands of protesters are already moving into Washington to air a variety of complaints against the bank, the IMF and US trade relations with China.

The IMF, which had been forced by the 1997-98 currency crisis to consistently lower its forecasts, said it is now in the pleasant position of boosting its estimates, largely because of the continued unexpected strength in the United States.

The IMF predicted that global output will expand by a strong 4.2 percent this year, the best showing since 1988, with growth continuing at a still-strong 3.9 percent in 2001.

The IMF also revised upward its estimate for how much output increased last year, now saying the global economy expanded by 3.3 percent. That is up sharply from the 2.5 percent increase of 1998, when the currency crisis that began in Asia was spreading to Russia and Latin America and posing a real risk of a global recession.

"The picture for global growth is a strong and quite positive one for the year 2000 and beyond,'' Michael Mussa, the IMF's chief economist, told reporters at a briefing.

But Mussa said that there are downside risks, particularly that the United States, the world's largest economy, will grow more strongly than expected in coming months, forcing the Federal Reserve to move so aggressively to increase interest rates that it could push the United States into a mild recession starting in 2001.

The IMF also mentioned threats from a sudden plunge in the US stock market that would shake consumer confidence and the country's huge and growing trade deficit.

"There are important risks going forward,'' Mussa told reporters. He stressed that the IMF believes the most likely outcome is not a "hard landing'' and recession in the United States but a "soft landing'' in which the Fed, which has already boosted interest rates five times in less than a year is successful in slowing the economy to a more sustainable pace that keeps inflation under control.

Anti-globalisation groups, hoping to repeat the success they had in disrupting the World Trade Organisation meetings last year in Seattle, are staging their own preliminary events, including a protest rally at the US Capitol yesterday where the AFL-CIO hoped to attract 10,000 demonstrators against one of the Clinton administration's top priorities, granting China permanent normal trade relations.

Thousands of union members have rallied at the Capitol and lobbied lawmakers to protest a bill that would give permanent normal trade status to China instead of annual reviews.

Teamsters President James P. Hoffa told some 5,000 cheering demonstrators that corporations supporting the deal have lost their "moral compass,'' and pledged to mobilise union members "to keep jobs in this country''.

Speakers ranged from Rep. Bernard Sanders of Vermont, an independent liberal, to conservative Reform Party presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan. Chinese dissident Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in prison in China, also spoke as did Joylyn Billy, a Teamster whose Mr. Coffee plant in Glenwillow, Ohio, is to close next month with jobs moving to Mexico.

"We will tell members of Congress: 'no blank check for China,' a country that has violated every trade agreement it has signed with the United States in the past 10 years and continues its repudiation of human rights in China,'' said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

Demonstrators have pledged to strike unexpectedly throughout the week to try to make their points against global capitalism. Today, one of the targets was The Washington Post.

At selected newspaper boxes, people got something extra with their daily paper, a one-page parody called The Washington Lost that was wrapped around the regular newspaper. It featured a photo of former IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus getting hit with a pie in the face and headlines such as "Besieged IMF Plans Meaningless Cosmetic Changes; Ad Campaign, Jingle Unveiled.'' A building near the World Bank-IMF headquarters was evacuated today because of a car fire in a basement garage. A District of Columbia fire spokesman said it appeared to be accidental. Police were stationed along the bridges bringing traffic from suburban Virginia into the capital to prevent any effort to slow or block the traffic.

The protest activities are being coordinated by a coalition called the Mobilisation for Global Justice, composed of many of the same groups that successfully disrupted meetings last December of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle, forcing authorities to declare a state of emergency and call out the National Guard.

The protest groups are hoping to use human chains and other tactics employed in Seattle to block intersections on Sunday and keep finance ministers from attending the opening IMF sessions.

But District of Columbia Police, backed up by federal authorities, have studied tapes of the Seattle demonstrations and hope to avoid the mistakes of authorities there.

On the Net: www.imf.org