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By Marco Aquino and Louise Egan

TRUJILLO, Peru, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Top financial officials from a score of Pacific Rim countries on Wednesday kick off a meeting in Peru which could help lay the groundwork for an overhaul of the world's financial architecture.

Meeting for two days in Trujillo, Peru, will be officials of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which includes a diverse range of nations. They include the United States and Canada; Asian heavyweights such as China and South Korea and Latin America's most open economies, Chile and Mexico.

Action plans formulated in Peru can help set the framework for a Nov. 14-15 summit of world leaders in Washington, called to explore revamping the world's financial architecture, which is dominated by institutions from the post-World War Two era.

At the meeting in Peru, the World Bank will call to expand the club of the world's richest nations -- the Group of Eight -- to include rapidly expanding economies of China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

"The idea of the G-8 plus these six countries represents 62 percent of global GDP," Juan Jose Daboub, World Bank managing director. "They are the ones who can do the most, to take helpful actions, so it's important that they be at the table when decisions are made."

The Group of Eight includes the United States, Canada, Japan and Russia -- represented here at this meeting. Other members are Britain, Germany, France and Italy. The G-8 in its annual meetings helps set the course of the world economy.

A G-8 expansion could dovetail with requests for major developing nations to contribute more resources to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, in exchange for a greater say in how the two lenders are run.

Daboub said World Bank President Robert Zoellick would take the G-8 expansion proposal to the Nov. 14-15 summit in Washington, taking place under the umbrella of Group of 20, which groups the world's biggest industrialized countries.

A prime advocate of an overhaul in the world's financial architecture is British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who says richer emerging economies should step up contributions to the International Monetary Fund to aid poorer developing nations.

The Washington meeting is seen as a possible opportunity to overhaul financial institutions such as the World Bank created after a 1944 finance-focused meeting of leaders in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.

NEXT STOP SAO PAULO, THEN ON TO WASHINGTON

From Trujillo in northern Peru, many officials here will fly to Sao Paulo, Brazil's economic hub, for a G-20/Bank of International Settlements gathering, which will also include prominent central bank officials.

Both gatherings can flesh out the agenda for the mid-November summit in Washington.

The initial purpose of the APEC finance officials meeting was to lay the groundwork for the Nov. 19-23 November summit of its leaders in Lima, the capital of Peru.

But the long-scheduled meeting coincided with the upheaval in world financial markets.

Globally, calls for bailouts and reforms have intensified as global equity and debt markets have plunged this year, leading central banks to pump billions of dollars into the financial system to stave off a credit crunch that started with the U.S. sub-prime mortgage mess.

Some think China, with nearly $2 trillion in foreign reserves, should do more for emerging markets at a time when the IMF's overall funding capacity appears limited and global growth is most robust in the developing world.

The IMF last week created a new Short-Term Liquidity Facility for emerging economies to relieve severe credit strains, although analysts have said it could run dry if lots of nations tap it.

APEC has historically defended free trade and open markets, but some members are calling for tighter regulations.

APEC members -- from Russia to Mexico to countries in Asia -- suffered severe crises in the late 1990s and despite being on better footing now, nightmares from the last meltdown haunt them.

A major overhaul of the global financial system is "long overdue," said Malaysian Deputy Minister of Finance Kong Cho Ha.

"A lot of restrictions have to be put in place to prevent a recurrence," he said. (Writing by Terry Wade and Hugh Bronstein; editing by Fiona Ortiz and Walker Simon)

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