Washington - Developing countries could face the most serious damage from a prolonged global credit crisis and have fewer resources to keep their own banks and businesses from collapsing, World Bank and International Monetary Fund members warned Sunday.

The IMF and World Bank promised to use their "full range of resources" to help countries that cannot manage the spreading financial crisis on their own, in a statement after the two global lenders' annual meeting.

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.

London - Ahead of Sunday's vital EU summit in Paris to deal with the global financial crisis, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for the adoption of bank rescue plans across Europe similar to the 500-billion-pound scheme unveiled in London last week.

In an article in the Sunday Mirror newspaper, Brown wrote "today I am going to Paris to persuade other European countries to adopt the comprehensive approach we have taken in Britain. For Europe, the stakes could not be higher and this is a moment of truth."

Paris - The leaders of the 15 nations using the euro as a single currency are to meet later Sunday in Paris to discuss common responses to the finance crisis.

As the crisis has spread from the United States, European nations have largely acted unilaterally to contain the damage.

Britain has undertaken a 60-billion-euro (80-billion-dollar) plan to partly nationalize four large banks, Ireland has guaranteed deposits in its six largest banks and other countries have acted on a case-by-case basis to bail-out struggling banks.

Wellington - New Zealand will guarantee customer deposits in banks and other financial institutions which opt into a scheme designed to shore up confidence in the current international financial crisis, the government announced on Sunday.

Finance Minister Michael Cullen said, "The scheme will cover all retail deposits of participating New Zealand-registered banks and retail deposits by locals in non-bank deposit-taking entities. This would include building societies, credit unions and deposit-taking finance companies."

The latest IMF's World Economic Outlook report presents a grim picture on Pakistan’s economy. The report predicts that Pakistan’s gross domestic product may decline to 3.5 percent and the inflation rate may speed up to 23 percent in the fiscal year (2008-09).

For the fiscal year of 2007/08, the country registered a growth rate of 5.8 percent and for the current fiscal it has set a target growth rate of 5.5 percent.