EU leaders to study crisis plan in Paris

PARIS (Reuters) - Leaders of euro zone countries hold an emergency meeting in Paris on Sunday hoping to agree on specific, pan-European measures to prevent market panic from triggering the most severe global downturn in decades.

Government officials have suggested action rather than talk could emerge from the first such gathering of the so-called Eurogroup, hastily arranged by President Nicolas Sarkozy after stock markets around the world plunged last week.

The meeting of the 15 countries which use the euro as their currency comes on the heels of a G7 summit of rich nations in Washington which offered no concrete, collective action but promised to do whatever was needed to unfreeze credit markets.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose country is not in the euro zone, will also meet Sarkozy on Sunday and a French official said the Eurogroup will likely use a rescue package unveiled by London last week as its reference point.

Speaking just before leaving Washington overnight, French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said the Eurogroup would go beyond talking about remedies to "put meat, muscles on the bones of that skeleton and to develop, follow up and execute upon it."

Lagarde said leaders needed to announce "detailed implementation measures as quickly as possible and before the opening of markets if necessary."

Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who met in France on Saturday, said they had prepared "a certain number of decisions" to present at a European summit to try to restore normal flows in blocked credit markets.