Chancellor Angela Merkel backed the European Central Bank'sinsistence on conditions for helping reduce borrowing costs inindebted countries, saying Germany is “in line” with the ECB'sapproach to defending the euro.

“Obviously time is pressing” on stamping out the debt crisis,though “on many of these issues we feel we're on the right track,”Merkel told reporters in Ottawa yesterday at a joint pressconference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Euro-areapolicy makers “feel committed to do everything we can to maintainthe common currency.”

Asked about ECB chief Mario Draghi's announcement that thecentral bank may return to sovereign bond-buying, Merkel saidrecent ECB decisions “have made it clear that the European CentralBank is counting on political action in the form of conditionalityas the precondition for a positive development of the euro.”