European policymakers, stung by criticism for failing to stem the euro zone debt crisis, began working on new ways to stop fallout from Greece's near-bankruptcy from inflicting more damage on the world economy.
After a weekend of being told by the United States, China and other countries that they must get more aggressive in their crisis response, European officials focused on ways to beef up their existing 440 billion-euro rescue fund.
Deep differences remained over whether the European Central Bank should commit more of its massive resources to shoring up Europe's banks and help struggling euro zone member countries.
Financial markets have plunged on concerns about the ability of Europe to get a grip on the crisis.
U.S. Treasury chief Timothy Geithner, in unusually blunt comments, said the risks from Europe were enormous.
"The threat of cascading default, bank runs, and catastrophic risk must be taken off the table," he said in speech to the International Monetary Fund on Saturday.
Europe came under more pressure on Sunday when a top IMF official said the ECB was the only player big enough to "scare" financial markets which have punished many euro zone members.
"The ECB is the only agent that can really scare the markets," Antonio Borges, the IMF's top official for Europe, told top economic policymakers from around the world.
However, Germany and many top officials within the ECB itself are wary about the central bank being drawn more deeply into supporting Greece and other debt-stricken states.
"It is not helpful that we have an avalanche of new proposals every week," ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said.
Markets fear that European banks could be dragged down by their exposure to Greece and other debt-strapped euro zone nations, and analysts say a bailout fund of around 2 trillion euros would be needed if the crisis spread to Italy and Spain.
A senior European official hinted that kind of firepower was being contemplated. "We need to find a mechanism where we can turn one euro in the EFSF into five, but there is no decision on how we could do that yet," the official said.
Markets showed little reaction to the new push by Europe to tackle the crisis. The euro was little changed in trading in Asia and U.S. S&P stock futures were down about 0.3 percent.
"For all the reassurances that you can get from the Europeans, I think that we're very, very far away from getting a huge announcement of a very large amount of money," said Enrique Alvarez, head of research at IDEAglobal in New York.
REECE MEETS IMF IN BID FOR MORE CASH
Greece, the country at the epicenter of the crisis, is trying to secure its latest wad of cash from international lenders including the IMF next month to avoid a default.
Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos, speaking to bankers in Washington, said Greece was determined to stay the course of its tough austerity plan to meet terms of its bailout package.
He complained the outside world did not understand the severity of the measures that Greece is taking by cutting pensions, salaries and public spending but he insisted the country will "make it" through the crisis.
