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Eurozone damps talk of rapid debt crisis steps

Reuters, Brussels
Eurozone officials played down reports on Monday of emerging plans to halve Greece's debts and recapitalise European banks to cope with the fallout, stressing that no such scheme is yet on the table.
Europe came under fierce pressure from the United States and other major economies at weekend talks in Washington to take swift, decisive action to stop the Greek debt crisis engulfing bigger eurozone states and derailing world economic recovery.
But officials said media reports that planning was already in place for a 50 percent writedown in Greek debt and a vast increase in the euro zone rescue fund, the EFSF, were highly premature.
"There is no change to the framework we are working on," said a eurozone official who is involved in decision-making on financial assistance to Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
"All this talk of a specific haircut for Greece or an enlargement of the EFSF, it is all just speculation. We are not working along those lines, " said the official.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, struggling to convince her fractious centre-right coalition to back a strengthening of the EFSF in a crucial vote on Thurs-
day, said on Sunday that letting Greece default would destroy investor confidence in the euro zone.
Diplomats said any talk of a fallback plan for Greece that would raise the cost to German taxpayers could only make her task more difficult in parliament this week.
Private economists and Brussels thinktanks are forecasting a Greek debt default within months or sooner, coupled with a capital injection for European banks and a 'leveraging up' of the EFSF so that it can handle fallout in Italy and Spain.
Eurozone officials acknowledge that such policy ideas are circulating and some could constitute a longer-term response to the 20-month debt crisis. But they insist no specific plans are yet in the works.
Instead, planning continues on the basis that Greece's debt burden, which is close to 160 percent of GDP, can be sustained as long as the government fully implements austerity measures demanded by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, the so-called troika.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner highlighted global concerns about deficient European crisis management, saying on Saturday: "The threat of cascading default, bank runs and catastrophic risk must be taken off the table."