Obama supports French-German crisis effort: Elysee

PARIS: US President Barack Obama lent his full support to a Franco-German effort to develop a comprehensive solution to the eurozone debt crisis, in a conversation Monday with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president's office said.

Sarkozy briefed the US president on his Sunday meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Obama expressed "his complete support for the strategy outlined by France and Germany to find global solution allowing the re-establishment of financial stability in the eurozone."

After meeting with Merkel in Berlin, Sarkozy promised a "lasting, global and quick responses before the end of the month" to the eurozone debt crisis that is threatening to engulf banks and core euro countries.

Sarkozy did not provide any details.

According to the White House, Obama and Sarkozy agreed "that decisive action is needed in order to finally resolve the crisis and assure economic recovery, both within the euro area and beyond it."

The two agreed to remain in close contact in light of the approaching summit of G20 nations in the French Mediterranean city of Cannes early next month, by which time Sarkozy and Merkel hope to have concrete proposals in hand.

Obama and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner have been outspoken about the eurozone needing to take swift and decisive action to ensure the debt crisis does not spread and snuff out a fragile global economic recovery.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011