PARIS – US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner voiced confidence yesterday that the European Union would find a way out of its debt crisis when he met eurozone leaders ahead of a crucial EU summit in Brussels.
‘I assessed how important it is for the US and countries around the world that Europe succeed,’ Geithner said after talks with French Finance Minister Francois Baroin in Paris. ‘I’m confident they will succeed.’Geithner, who met leaders including French President Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of today’s summit, said he wanted to ‘make sure there is a sufficient strong firewall in place’ to stop the crisis spreading.’We exchanged views on the need for the highest possible firewall to avoid contagion,’ Baroin said, after laying out French-German proposals aimed at bolstering eurozone discipline to be examined at the Brussels summit.Baroin said that in Brussels ‘neither Angela Merkel nor Nicolas Sarkozy will leave the table without a strong agreement being signed’.EU leaders are under intense pressure to convince markets they can come up with a rapid rescue plan for the eurozone following the threat of possible debt downgrades by ratings agency Standard and Poor’s.S&P’s announcement came hours after Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced their plan for a new EU treaty and tougher budgetary rules, including sanctions for lax eurozone economies, after crisis talks on Monday.The debt warning means that Germany, France and other eurozone countries could lose their top-notch credit ratings without urgent action and their borrowing rates would probably rise.Meanwhile the EU’s EFSF bailout fund, also the target of the downgrade warning because it is backed by the ratings of eurozone countries, said it intended to issue short-term paper by the end of this year. – Nampa-AFP
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