Poland hosts crunch talks on eurozone crisis
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner is making a rare appearance at crunch talks in Poland between European Union finance ministers and central bankers over the crisis in the eurozone which has shaken global financial markets over the past week.
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The meeting comes amid near market certainty that Greece is heading for a default on it massive debt repayments as well as range of problems that divide the 17 eurozone partners.
These include Finland’s objections to a new bailout for Greece and Slovakia’s refusal to stage an early parliamentary vote on ratification of a second 160-billion-euro bailout.
Europe is under growing pressure to end month’s of bickering over a second financial bailout for Athens.
Despite Geitner’s presence at the talks, EU finance ministers were quick to emphasize that the US is carrying the world’s biggest amount of sovereign debt.
“We Europeans have to do our homework together and the Americans have to do theirs… We’re not telling each other what to do, but we’re exchanging views,” said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.
Asia-Pacific markets rallied on Friday after the world’s most powerful central banks offered to inject US dollars into lenders squeezed by the eurozone debt crisis.
The European Central Bank and it US, Japanese, Swiss and British counterparts said they would lend to banks facing a shortage of the American currency.
The move sent European stocks soaring while the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 1.66 per cent.
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