TOKYO: US President Barack Obama called on Asia to embrace "balanced and sustained" economic growth, to secure a global rebound from the deepest economic crisis in decades.

"We must strengthen our economic recovery, and pursue growth that is both balanced and sustained," said Obama in a major foreign policy speech in Tokyo on Saturday, on the second day of his four-nationAsian tour.

"Now that we are on the brink of economic recovery, we must also ensure that it can be sustained," Obama said in the speech in the Suntory concert hall in downtown Tokyo.

"We simply cannot return to the same cycles of boom and bust that led us into a global recession. We cannot follow the same policies that led to such imbalanced growth."