Clinton urges EU to deliver plan; Sarkozy warns of ‘last chance to solve crisis’

The United States is confident that EU leaders will resolve the debt crisis but believes they need to agree a plan at a summit on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

“We have great confidence in Europe, there is absolutely no doubt about that,” Clinton told a news conference in Brussels.

“But we do need a plan to rally behind in order to know the way forward and so we look forward to hearing the results of the deliberations that will be coming forth in the next day or two,” she said.

Clinton added: “We have a great stake in Europe’s success.”

The United States is ready to help and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who visited Europe this week, is continuing close consultations with European governments, Clinton said.

“The United States stands ready to do our part. We want to help you resolve this crisis because it’s the right thing to do,” she said.

Clinton spoke after two days of talks with NATO counterparts.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned on Thursday that Europe was facing an unprecedented risk from its debt woes and said a crucial summit of EU leaders was the last chance to solve the crisis.

"Never has the risk of Europe's explosion been so great," Sarkozy said in a speech in Marseille, adding that there would be "no second chance" if the summit failed to reach a deal and that Europeans had only "several weeks" to act to save the eurozone.

"We must act straight away. The longer we wait to take this decision, the more it will cost and the less effective it will be," he told a meeting of European conservative parties.

"If we don't have an agreement on Friday, we will not have a second chance," Sarkozy said.

He also said Europeans had only "several weeks" to act to save the eurozone, which is facing a sovereign debt credit crisis that has raised fears of a collapse of the single currency union.

France and Germany were working Thursday to drum up support for their plan to save the eurozone, which would amend EU treaties to include legal or constitutional limits on deficits and automatic penalties for eurozone nations that overspend.

Russian concern

Meanwhile, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday that Russia was very concerned about the sovereign debt crisis that is threatening to break up the eurozone, just hours before the EU summit.

“We are very disturbed by this issue because it affects the situation in the whole world and our country too,” Medvedev said at a joint press conference in Prague with his Czech counterpart Vaclav Klaus.

Medvedev spoke as European Union leaders scrambled to find a last-minute deal to save the euro at a crucial summit for a debt-laden currency union.

“The euro problem is taking place in countries that are not similar in terms of economic development,” Medvedev said. “The next few months will show what this will come down to.”

Known for his strident euroskepticism, Klaus echoed the comments by his Russian counterpart, but warned that finding a solution would require a deep economic and political transformation of Europe.

“The problem is deeper than the euro as such, this is only the tip of the iceberg,” Klaus said.

“There is a fundamental solution − a deep transformation of the method of European integration and of the European political, social and economic systems.”

Commenting on a wave of protests sweeping Moscow against alleged mass fraud in the recent parliamentary election, Medvedev urged parliament to convene.

“The main thing is to calm down and give the new parliament a chance to start working,” Medvedev told reporters, as calls mounted for an election re-run amid the allegations of vote-rigging.

Around 1,000 people have been arrested in three days of protests in Moscow over the alleged rigging of the polls and organizers have vowed to stage a mass protest in the capital at the weekend.

While admitting the protests were “a manifestation of democracy”, Medvedev warned people must “be obedient and not violate the law and the demands of the Russian government.”

“I think people must be allowed to express their opinion, it’s normal to want that, but that must not create problems in Moscow,” he insisted.

Earlier Thursday freshly re-elected Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States of provoking the post-election protests that have posed a surprise challenge to his decade-long era of domination.

“They heard the signal and with the support of the U.S. State Department started active work.”

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton complained the weekend parliamentary election was neither free nor fair, a concern echoed by the last president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev who on Wednesday called for them to be re-run due to ballot rigging.

But Putin accused the West of funding Russian NGOs to the tune of “hundreds of millions of dollars” with the aim of questioning the validity of the elections.

Independent poll monitoring group Golos has said it was subjected to severe harassment by the authorities since the build-up to the elections, with its communications paralyzed and its chief detained for hours.