Analysts: EU summit won't fix euro crisis
                              Published: March. 24, 2011 at 3:30 AM
            
                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
       BRUSSELS, March 24 (UPI) -- European leaders  meeting in Brussels will likely not finalize a eurozone bailout fund,  due in part to Portugal's fiscal crisis, analysts said.
 Portuguese Prime Minister 
Jose Socrates  offered his resignation Wednesday night after losing a crucial vote in  Parliament on austerity measures, pushing the country toward early  elections and an international bailout similar to what Greece and  Ireland received last year.
 "This crisis will have very serious consequences in terms of the  confidence Portugal needs to enjoy with institutions and financial  markets," Socrates said in a televised speech. "So from now on, it is  those who provoked it who will be responsible for its consequences."
 Socrates is to attend the two-day European Union summit beginning  Thursday as caretaker prime minister, without the political authority to  negotiate a deficit-reduction plan as he had planned, the Financial  Times reported.
 "In a political void, cutting a deal with the International Monetary  Fund and the EU to trigger financial support would be particularly  cumbersome," Gilles Moec, head of European economic research at Deutsche  Bank, said in report Wednesday.
 Other problems facing the bloc include a deadlock over the new Irish  government's bid to cut the interest rate it pays on its $120 billion  bailout. Ireland refuses to compromise on its relatively low 12.5  percent corporate tax rate to win a reduction in the cost of its EU-IMF  loans.
 In addition, Finland -- one of the eurozone's most fiscally sound  nations -- is holding up a deal to expand the lending capacity of the  current rescue fund for the euro. This could hold up a final agreement  on shoring up the euro for several weeks, the Financial Times said.
 The summit had been billed as the moment when EU leaders finalize "a  grand bargain" for solving the debt crisis triggered by Greece, Ireland  and the "peripheral" eurozone countries that would include putting  together a new $620 billion bailout fund.
 German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who this year asserted leadership  over efforts to rescue the euro, said Wednesday it was unlikely leaders  would put together comprehensive measures to prevent the debt crisis  from spreading.
 She encouraged European countries to press ahead with their own  individual efforts at coordinating economic policies, telling an  audience in Frankfurt "It couldn't make the situation any worse and it's  worth a try."