Under pressure, eurozone leaders rush to end Greek debt discord

Eurozone leaders strived to bridge sharp divisions over a second bailout for Greece ahead of a make-or-break summit on Thursday as the United States pressed them to contain a deepening debt crisis.

With nervous markets putting pressure on the eurozone to bring the crisis to a swift end, senior Finance Ministry officials were scheduled to hold talks yesterday and tomorrow to wrap up a deal in time for the summit.

Yesterday the eurozone was considering a tax on banks to raise funds to help debt-stricken Greece, a way out of the impasse on how to proceed without risking a default, French European Affairs Minister Jean Leonetti said. The euro and global stock markets fell while the borrowing costs of Italy and Spain, two eurozone nations in the line of fire, soared to euro-era record levels amid debt contagion fears. With fears growing that the crisis could reverberate across the world, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged European leaders to “work more forcefully to contain the risk of an escalating crisis in Europe. “They have the capacity to manage this in a way that doesn’t add to the broader burdens in the global economy and of course we want them to do that,” he told the US financial network CNBC.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made clear she wants a deal on the table by Thursday after she forced EU president Herman Van Rompuy to cancel plans for a meeting last Friday following a turbulent week in the markets.