Obama and Cameron exert pressure to ease debt crisis

US president Barack Obama and British prime minister David Cameron called for an immediate plan to resolve the euro-region debt crisis, adding to pressure on German chancellor Angela Merkel to ease the way to a deal.

Cameron travels to Berlin today for talks with the German leader, as Spain pushes for European money to rescue its banks. The demand for action comes less than two weeks before Group of 20 leaders meet in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Obama and Cameron, who spoke by phone yesterday, “agreed on the need for an immediate plan to tackle the crisis and to restore market confidence as well as the need for a longer-term strategy to ensure a stable single currency,” Cameron’s spokeswoman, Vickie Sheriff, told reporters in London.

Merkel hardened her opposition to joint debt sharing in the euro region in a speech on June 2 even after Obama singled out Europe’s leaders for not doing enough to arrest the financial crisis.

As Spain struggles to avoid becoming the next country to call for a rescue, the pressure from Cameron and Obama adds to that on Merkel from the European Central Bank, France and Italy to do more to halt the spread of contagion.

Cameron’s spokeswoman gave no details on what sort of steps the premier and Obama thought euro-region leaders should take to solve the three year crisis.

Merkel and German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble are urging Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy to accept an international bailout since Spain cannot solve its banking woes alone, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported, without citing a source.