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ATHENS: Greece has dropped its plans to hold a controversial referendum on the country’s euro zone membership, which had threatened to plunge the bloc into a crisis, the country’s finance ministry said on Friday.

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos made the pledge in telephone calls made to Eurogroup Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission’s Economy and Monetary Affairs chief Olli Rehn and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, the Greek finance minstry said in a statement.

"Venizelos informed his interlocutors about the decision to not hold a referendum," the statement said

World economic recovery on ’firmer footing’: Obama

CANNES: Conceding a fragile global recovery and plodding job growth back home, President Barack Obama said Friday he is confident European leaders are fixing their ominous debt crisis that threatens to undermine the United States and his own shot at a second term.

A year shy of the election, Obama said the American economy is growing, but ``way too slow.’’

The president capped his role at a brisk G-20 summit essentially where he started it, offering solidarity to his European peers with none-too-subtle signals it was their responsibility to clean up the economic mess in their own backyards.

At issue is an evolving rescue package across the 17 nations sharing the euro as their common currency. The plan could prevent a default in Greece, put up a financial firewall against future trouble and reassure markets about the credibility of the euro.

``I am confident that Europe has the capacity to meet this challenge,’’ Obama said in a news conference at the meeting of leading industrialized and developing countries.

``I know it isn’t easy, but what is absolutely critical _ and what the world looks for in moments such as this _ is action,’’ he said. ``That’s how we confronted our financial crisis in the United States.’’

The drama of Greek’s messy internal struggles and their potential to derail the entire European effort hung over the summit in this French Riviera resort, as did a gloomy rain.

While Obama met with world leaders, a news jobs report showed the American economy added 80,000 jobs in October, and that the job expansion in the previous two months was better than first thought.

The unemployment rate dropped slightly to 9 percent. Should it remain anywhere close to that level a year from now, Obama will face re-election with the highest jobless rate in recent times.

``The least of my concerns at the moment is the politics of a year from now,’’ Obama said. ``I’m worried about putting people back to work right now because those folks are hurting and the U.S. economy is underperforming.’’

He cast the jobs report as positive but said the pace of the recovery shows ``once again that the economy’s growing way too slow.’’

Obama repeatedly tried to keep the focus on his confidence that Europe is on its way to solving its financial woes. ``I can say that we’ve come together and made important progress to get our economic recoveries on a firmer footing,’’ Obama said.

Still, important questions had not been answered. Leaders of the economic powers did not agree on how to increase the firepower of the International Monetary Fund to help stem the European debt crisis.

Obama acknowledged that there is hard work left to do. But he said Europe had a foundation with the right elements: a way ahead for indebted Greece, a credible firewall to contain the crisis and a plan to strengthen European banks.

``All of us have an enormous interest in Europe’s success and all of us will be affected if Europe is not growing, and that certainly includes the United States,’’ Obama said. ``If Europe isn’t growing, it’s harder for us to do what we need to do for the American people: creating jobs, lifting up the middle class and putting our fiscal house in order.’’

Obama even extended some political sympathy, reminiscing about the economic difficulties he faced upon taking office in 2009.

Instead of working with a single legislative body as he did, Obama noted that there are multiple parliaments, commissions and institutions involved in solving Europe’s crisis. He said some of his counterparts joked that he had gotten a crash course in European politics in the past couple of days.