US Treasury chief Geithner in crunch eurozone talks

WROCLAW: US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrived in Poland Friday for crunch talks with European finance ministers, as eurozone nations scramble to douse the Greek debt fire.

Geithner, who has taken the rare step of joining EU ministers as they hold internal talks, did not speak to waiting reporters as he entered a congress centre in Wroclaw, southwest Poland.

He arrived alongside French Finance Minister Francois Baroin, smiling and shaking hands with the latter -- France hosted the American only last week at a meeting of the G7 industrialised nations.

Geithner was invited to attend the talks by Poland, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the 27-nation EU.

Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski underscored the significance of a US presence at such an EU meeting.

"It's no accident that the US Treasury Secretary is visiting Europe for the second time in the space of about a week. One thing's for sure, he hasn't just come to pick mushrooms in our beautiful forests," Rostowski told reporters on the eve of the talks.

"It's rare for him to set foot in Europe, so coming twice in about a week, I think speaks for itself," he added.

On Wednesday, Geithner had said that European leaders "recognize they are going to have to do more, they recognize they have been behind the curve" in dealing with the debt crisis.

"They have to move more quickly," he added.

He said Europe needed to shore up global confidence that it can handle the crisis stemming from unsupportable debt loads in countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland.

But he said he believed Europeans had the will, tools and financing to handle the crisis.

"This is their challenge and they have the economic and the financial capacity to meet this challenge," he said.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011