Dubai World may ask creditors for five to eight years to repay its $22 billion in debt as part of a restructuring proposal that could come as early as this week, people close to the matter say, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The Emirates conglomerate and its creditors also are weighing a structure that would give creditors a share of the proceeds from asset sales or possibly a share in future profit of the company if it cannot fully meet its interest-payment obligations, one of these people said.

Germany has set out three fundamental preconditions for any rescue package for Greece, including involvement of the International Monetary Fund, and a commitment by its European Union partners to tough new rules to control public debt and deficits in the eurozone – including necessary EU treaty changes, the Financial Times reported. A senior government official in Berlin said there would be no agreement at this week’s EU summit on a specific rescue package for the debt-strapped Greek government.

Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said Tuesday that Greece has no need for financial assistance and insisted that the country will fix its fiscal problems on its own, The Wall Street Journal reported. But Mr. Papaconstantinou said Greece's European partners should move ahead with some kind of support mechanism to help ensure stability in the euro zone, which is expected to be at the center of discussions at this week's European Union Summit. "Let me be clear, Greece has not asked for financial aid from anyone.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday said Greece doesn't need financial support and European Union leaders shouldn't make the question of aid for Greece the focus of their summit later this week, The Wall Street Journal reported. In an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio, Ms. Merkel warned other European leaders against unsettling financial markets by raising "false expectations" that there will be a decision on aid for Greece this week.

Iceland's finance minister said on Monday the government was ready to resume talks with Britain and the Netherlands on Icesave without preconditions and expressed hope a deal could be reached in "not too many weeks", Reuters reported. Earlier this month, Icelanders overwhelmingly rejected the terms of a deal to repay Britain and the Netherlands more than $5 billion lost by foreign savers in Iceland's banking collapse. The spat has held up aid for Iceland's stricken economy. "We are ready to resume talks without preconditions.

Greece and Europe's other intensive-care economies face a threat that can't be solved by cutting public spending or raising taxes: a loss of competitiveness, The Wall Street Journal reported. And in the eyes of those struggling economies, the villain is Germany—the euro zone's largest economy—which has emerged in recent years as the region's most competitive.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is racing to secure an explicit pledge of European aid and cut his country’s borrowing costs as €20 billion ($27 billion) of debt comes due in the next two months, Bloomberg reported. With investors still demanding Greece pay 3 percentage points more than Germany on its 10-year debt, Papandreou says Greece can’t afford to hold out much longer at current market rates. His government still needs to raise another €10 billion to repay bonds maturing on April 20 and May 19.

Germany hasn't ruled out International Monetary Fund aid for Greece, a spokesman said Friday, Dow Jones reported. Ulrich Wilhelm, Chancellor Angela Merkel's main spokesman, told reporters Friday that because Greece hasn't requested aid from Germany or the European Union, there's no basis for making a decision. "It's an open question," Wilhelm said, adding that whether and how to provide aid for Greece would be "decided quickly" if Greece were to make such a request. "The government has not ruled out financial aid from the IMF," Wilhelm said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, adopting a harsher tone toward Greece than the one expressed by some other European leaders, said Wednesday that Europe needed better rules to police its members, and she tacitly endorsed a proposal to eject wayward countries from the group of countries that use the euro, The New York Times reported. Speaking before a session of Parliament in Berlin, Mrs. Merkel referred to a proposal made last week by Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister.

Michel Barnier, the European commissioner in charge of financial market regulation, said he would propose controls to curb speculative trading in credit default swaps, (CDS) a form of debt insurance that has been blamed for worsening Greece's economic problems, Telegraph.co.uk reported. His measures will target so-called naked selling of CDS, where insurance contracts are sold to buyers who do not own the debt. The cost of CDS on Greece rocketed when fears grew that the country could default on its debt.