G20 put pressure on Europe | Bangkok Post: breakingnews

MEXICO : Finance officials from the G20 leading and developing economies entered a second day of talks on Sunday split on how best to tackle Europe's debt crisis, which has dominated the gathering.

While hailing recent actions to fight the crisis, G20 members from outside the region were turning the screws on Europe to bolster its defenses further to prevent another outbreak of panic that would harm the global economy.A senior official from a non-European country said the G20 was engaged in a tricky balancing act of putting gentle pressure on the Europeans without seeming over-demanding.Some developing countries have dangled the carrot of more funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to battle the eurozone's woes -- but only if Europe stumps up more cash first and gives them more decision-making power.In addition to reinforcing "their firewall," Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega called for the implementation of 2010 reforms that laid out a new system of quotas to increase the voting power of emerging economies in the IMF's decision-making processes.The final statement from the finance ministers and central bankers in Mexico City could explicitly set out the trade-off, a source said: more IMF cash from outside Europe if the region first puts its hand in its own pocket.However, Germany, Europe's top economy and paymaster, has so far steadfastly resisted calls -- from the United States, the IMF and others -- to boost its crisis-fighting war chest.Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble made no bones about Berlin's opposition saying ahead of the meeting it "doesn't make economic sense" to pour more money into rescue funds for debt-wracked eurozone countries.Most non-European countries -- and several inside the 17-nation bloc -- want leaders to combine an existing rescue fund, the EFSF, with a permanent version called the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) which comes into force in...