The sum­mit of the G8 group of ma­jor world economies is un­der way at Camp David, near Wash­ing­ton, with Eu­rope's debt cri­sis ex­pect­ed to dom­i­nate. US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma said all the G8 na­tions were "ab­solute­ly com­mit­ted" to the goals of growth, sta­bil­i­ty and fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion.

Ger­many, which backs aus­ter­i­ty, is un­der pres­sure from the US and France for stim­u­lus mea­sures, an­a­lysts say. Greece's pos­si­ble ex­it from the eu­ro­zone is high on the agen­da. The sum­mit at the Camp David pres­i­den­tial re­treat, in Mary­land is be­ing at­tend­ed by lead­ers of the US, Ger­many, the UK, France, Italy, Japan, Cana­da and Rus­sia.

UK Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron said a sense of ur­gency was need­ed to tack­le the eu­ro­zone cri­sis. He called for strong banks and deficit re­duc­tion. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es that the sit­u­a­tion in the eu­ro­zone has changed. The fi­nance min­istry, for ex­am­ple, now ac­cepts that pro-growth con­ces­sions have to be made to the new pres­i­dent of France.

Berlin thinks ex­ist­ing Eu­ro­pean Union funds could be used more ef­fec­tive­ly. At the same time, politi­cians in Berlin are now open­ly talk­ing about Plan B, as they call it: Greece leav­ing the eu­ro, which some of them think could be done with­out a fi­nan­cial cat­a­stro­phe.

Chan­cel­lor Merkel de­nies telling the in­ter­im Greek gov­ern­ment there should be a ref­er­en­dum there on the eu­ro-but many in gov­ern­ment cir­cles now be­lieve that the Greek elec­tion will be ex­act­ly that. "There is a grow­ing sense of ur­gency that ac­tion needs to be tak­en, con­tin­gency plans need to be put in place and the strength­en­ing of banks, gov­ern­ments, fire­walls and all of those things need to take place very fast," Merkel said at Camp David.

Greece's care­tak­er gov­ern­ment was sworn in this week af­ter elec­tions failed to pro­duce a vi­able coali­tion to run the coun­try. New elec­tions have been sched­uled for June 17. The re­sult could de­ter­mine the fate of aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures de­mand­ed by Greece's in­ter­na­tion­al cred­i­tors.

In­vestors fear any re­fusal by Athens to im­pose deep spend­ing cuts agreed un­der a bailout deal could re­sult in the coun­try quit­ting the bloc of 17 coun­tries that use the eu­ro. Larg­er coun­tries such as Spain or Italy strug­gling to ease their debt loads might then be­come vul­ner­a­ble, po­ten­tial­ly trig­ger­ing wider eu­ro­zone up­heaval and even a glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis to ri­val the one of 2008.

Most of the lead­ers are ex­pect­ed to join a larg­er group of in­ter­na­tion­al of­fi­cials for a Na­to sum­mit to­day, at which Afghanistan is ex­pect­ed to be the main item on the agen­da.

BBC