BERLIN - European finance chiefs returned to Brussels on Monday on a mission to convince global leaders that they can shield countries such as Italy and Spain from the spreading debt crisis by bulking up their bailout fund.

As political turmoil envelops governments in Athens and Rome, finance ministers from the 17-member eurozone will work on the details of plans to increase the muscle of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Leveraging the fund would aim to ramp up spending capacity to 1 trillion euros ($1.4 trillion).

European leaders' failure to resolve the 2-year-old debt crisis threatens to drag down the global economy and trigger another financial downturn. World leaders at a G20 meeting last week demanded euro governments do more to staunch the turmoil - including fleshing out how an expanded EFSF would work - before they commit fresh cash to the region.

"The leveraged EFSF may still turn into a bazooka, but so far it looks more like a water pistol," Joachim Fels, Morgan Stanley's chief global economist in London, wrote in a note to clients on Sunday. While ministers may furnish some detail on how the fund operates, "don't hold your breath", he wrote.

Although EU officials have said an agreement on EFSF leveraging won't be finalized on Monday, finance ministers will discuss technical details on how to partly insure bond sales and set up a special investment vehicle to draw outside money.

Even before the framework for the EU's new tools is fleshed out, European leaders have struggled to entice investment from outside the region.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last week that G20 nations wanted to know more before pledging money to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to lend to the EFSF.

Merkel told reporters at the G20 summit in Cannes, France, on Nov 4 that there were "hardly any countries here that said they will join up" with the EFSF. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said a deal may not come before February.

The leaders pledged that Europe will speed the implementation of measures they negotiated at the summit 11 days ago, including recapitalizing banks and writing down Greek debt.

"I think that they are increasingly getting worried that this might not be enough," Carsten Brzeski, senior economist at ING Group in Brussels, said in an interview on Sunday. "This is the weak spot of the October conclusions."

The ministers' meeting was attended by newly installed European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi, who made his debut last week by unexpectedly cutting the benchmark interest rate by a quarter point to 1.25 percent to aid growth.

Draghi ruled out expanding the ECB's purchasing of sovereign debt, calling the program "temporary" and "limited".

Bloomberg News