CANNES: French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and top EU officials held crisis talks on Greek debt in Cannes on Wednesday, the eve of the Group of 20 summit.
IMF director Christine Lagarde, EU President Herman van Rompuy and European Commission chairman Jose Manuel Barroso joined the two leaders for talks on Greece's shock decision to hold a referendum on an EU bailout deal.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou stunned his EU partners and world markets on Monday when he announced that Greece would put a European bail-out plan agreed only the previous week to a referendum.
After the talks, Luxembourg's Prime Minister and the eurozone chairman Jean-Claude Juncker said: "We took a decision last week as 17 (member states), we can't allow anyone to disassociate himself from that decision."
A reportedly furious Sarkozy summoned Papandreou to Cannes on the eve of the broader summit to try to find a way out of the crisis.
Sarkozy and Merkel were to meet Papandreou later Wednesday, after the French leader dines with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
A French G20 source said it was too late to persuade Athens to abandon the referendum plan but Paris hopes to convince Greece to hold it quickly and to confront voters with a stark choice -- stay or leave the eurozone.
"It is too late to persuade them to go back on the decision to hold a referendum," the source said. "The idea is that they hold the referendum as quickly as possible and make it about being in the euro."
Many Greeks are opposed to the rescue package because of the stringent austerity measures attached to it but most favour remaining in the eurozone, according to recent opinion polls.
The referendum has thrown into doubt the eurozone's plan to resolve the crisis through a major write-off of Greek debt, support for banks to absorb their losses and a major boost in the firepower of the EU rescue fund.
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