As a fresh snowfall melted slowly outside the Davos Congress Center, officials and bankers made plans to try to thaw their relationship. Regulators, central bankers and government leaders want to persuade bankers at a meeting on Saturday that they should accept more stringent regulation, or face more draconian curbs from politicians responding to an angry public. Banking executives met among themselves on Thursday, and many acknowledged the need to take a more active role in the public debate about financial regulation. One head of a central bank who asked for anonymity said that he would consider the meeting a success if there was widespread agreement among bankers to cooperate more fully in creating regulations intended to avert another financial crisis. There has been wide discussion at the World Economic Forum, which began Wednesday, about the role banks played in the financial crisis. Several participants have said they hope the gathering in Davos on Saturday can help set the stage for more formal talks at forums like the Group of 20 nations, as well as at the national level. Similar meetings between bankers and government officials have taken place at Davos in the past, but the outrage over the large bonuses being paid by banks after benefiting from government bailouts has given this year's sessions a sense of purpose. Several bankers at Davos said that they had accepted the inevitability of more regulation and agreed that they should cooperate to create standards. 'None of us should kid ourselves it's going to be back to the way it was,' Peter Sands, the chief executive of Standard Chartered Bank, based in London, said in a panel discussion. Sands called for a 'constructive dialogue' on issues like how to deal with banks that cannot be allowed to fail for fear of endangering the financial system. Banks' resistance to change has only lowered the public's esteem of them, Sands said. 'We have been simultaneously tone-deaf and shooting ourselves in the foot.' Since the beginning of the year, Britain, France and the United States have made a string of policy proposals that would be made added to higher capital requirements and other rules agreed on by the Group of 20. Brian T. Moynihan, the chief executive of Bank of America, said that banks 'have to be part of the solution.' Paul Calello, head of Credit Suisse's investment banking business, acknowledged that the industry needed to deal with its reputation problem. 'We want to be seen as responsible players in the market,' Calello said. 'The group is a bit embattled, and what you're trying to do is change the dialogue,' said Duncan L. Niederauer, the chief executive of NYSE Euronext. 'So you sit down with politicians and say that, 'If you stop blaming us, we can come to a good solution.'' Among bankers there is also resentment that they are being blamed for the recession. Josef Ackermann, the chief of Deutsche Bank, said he supported measures like requiring banks to keep more capital in reserve. But he complained that banks like Deutsche Bank, which did not need a bailout, are suffering for the sins of others. 'Only a few banks have failed the test of this crisis,' Ackermann said. 'We should single out those who have made major mistakes.' Blame also lies with inefficient markets and poor policymaking, he said. In a measure of the political momentum behind the changes, David Cameron, leader of Britain's Conservative Party, said that he supported President Barack Obama's proposals to restrict risk-taking by banks and to impose a tax on bank liabilities, with the money used to insure against future losses. 'The relationship between society and banks has to change quite fundamentally,' Cameron said. The charged political atmosphere makes some bankers skeptical that agreement is possible. 'Everybody is asking for the heads of the bankers,' said Jorge Londono Saldarriaga, president of Bancolombia in Medellin. Some central bankers and regulators were equally skeptical and played down the offer of closer cooperation as an attempt to repair the banking industry's reputation. One central banker, who declined to be identified because he did not want to offend banking executives, said banks had the chance 'to regulate themselves and set aside larger capital cushions for a year during which they earned record profits but decided not to.' 'If they don't get their house together, we will do it for them,' the banker said. 