European Union leaders are holding an emergency summit in Brussels on Wednesday to try to finalise details of a plan to tackle the eurozone debt crisis.
There is disagreement over how to boost the strength of an EU bailout fund for indebted countries using the euro.
It is the second eurozone summit in four days, but the BBC reports it seems unlikely to produce a detailed masterplan to end two years of turmoil.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany earlier said there remained "many problems to settle".
Difficulty about such details appear to have been behind a decision to cancel a meeting of EU finance ministers which was to have preceded the leaders' summit.
However, Mrs Merkel said it was worth taking the risk to maximise the bailout fund's spending power in order to safeguard Germany's future prosperity.
The world is watching Germany and Europe," she said. "They are looking to see if we are ready and able to assume our responsibilities during Europe's worst crisis since the end of World War II."
"If the euro fails, then Europe fails," she said, adding there was no certainty that the continent would then enjoy another 60 years of peace.
Mrs Merkel told the Bundestag, the lower house of Parliament in Berlin, that private bondholders would have to take a substantial write-down so that Greece's debt could be reduced to 120% of gross domestic product by 2020 from 160% this year.
