Berlin - Chancellor Angela Merkel sought backing Sunday from sceptical Germans for a costly worldwide bank-rescue plan. In remarks to a Sunday newspaper, Bild am Sonntag, she said, "Only action by the state can restore necessary confidence now."
Before a meeting Sunday in Paris of the 15 eurozone leaders, she said that the intervention had to be internationally coordinated.
"We are not doing this for the sake of the banks but in the interests of the people," she told the Sunday version of the mass- circulation newspaper Bild.
As in the United States, the left in Germany has grumbled at a rescue likely to cost tens of billions of euros, saying it comes only a few years after a reduction in the scale of welfare handouts to the German poor.
Merkel has reiterated her opposition to a joint bail-out by the eurozone, saying each country must deal with its own troubles.
Four of the G7 nations which set out the broad direction of the plan on Friday in Washington will be represented at the 16-nation Paris summit, which will embrace Britain although the British do not use the euro currency.
Merkel has not detailed Berlin's own actions, but sources in Berlin told Deutsche Presse-Agentur
