Europe to seek cash at G20 meet to quell crisis at home

MEXICO CITY: The US, Chinese and Japanese officials say they will press euro zone countries to do more to merit outside help when the world's largest economies gather on Saturday for a meeting dominated by Europe's sovereign-debt woes just days after Greece secured a second bailout.

European officials will push other Group of 20 nations to commit fresh cash to the International Monetary Fund to help solve the region's fiscal crisis, while the Obama administration says Europe now must first strengthen its firewall to prevent debts of countries such as Italy and Portugal from becoming unsustainable. G 20 finance ministers and central bank governors meet in Mexico City four days after the European Union sanctioned a 130 billion-euro ($170 billion) rescue for Greece and amid warnings by the IMF that concerns about debt sustainability could drag the world into another recession. While China, Japan, Brazil and the Mexican hosts say they are willing to help once Europe acts, the US shows no signs of reaching for its chequebook.

"Europe will implicitly be the main political topic of conversation, in the lens of what will it take to get more contribution to the IMF," Jacob Kirkegaard, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in an interview. "The Europeans clearly realise that they have to move first."

With demand from the European Union's 500 million consumers slowing, China and Japan have signalled a commitment to help resolve Europe's debt woes. The condition is that Europe "make more efforts to create a bigger firewall," Japanese finance minister Jun Azumi had said on February 20 in Beijing.

Japan is considering contributing $50 billion to the IMF's European rescue package, the Asahi newspaper reported on February 23, without saying where it obtained the information.