Eastern European countries, whose currencies have dropped sharply due to their worsening economic prospects, are not the only nations needing external help, International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said today.
The IMF had four programmes running with eastern European countries and was discussing co-operation with a number of nations, not only in Europe but elsewhere, he told reporters.
"With this crisis you have some drying up of the financial inflows on which those countries were relying during the last decade and they need external support; so Eastern Europe is one part of the world, the global economy, which is in trouble but it is not the only one," he said.
"One of the characteristics of this crisis is, of course, that it is really a global crisis and that's why it is asking for global responses," he said.
Reuters