Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi attends a press conference during the G8 summit, in Deauville, northwestern France, on May 27, 2011. [Gao Jing/Xinhua]

The summit also launched new "Deauville Partnership" to expand political and economic ties with the North Africa and the Middle East and called an extension of the mandate of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to cover the nations of the southern Mediterranean. The bank was set up in the early 1990s to support economies in the former Soviet bloc.

On the broader economic front, the G8 statement includes a commitment from the European Union to address the eurozone's sovereign debt problem with "determination" and an engagement from the United States to "put in place a clear and credible medium term fiscal consolidation framework."

European officials insisted they would defend the euro which has come under increasing pressure due to market doubts that Greece will be unable to pay its debts. Greece's woes have raised the risk of a default that could trigger a crisis across the eurozone.

Sarkozy said he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were "totally, completely and unambiguously" committed to protecting the euro. He warned that attacks on the currency should be considered as an attack on Europe and an attack on France.

The French leader said the word "restructuring" was not in France's vocabulary if that entailed Greece or any other eurozone country not meeting its debt commitments. However, he suggested that the burden of debt repayment could somehow be shared by private investors.

In his news conference, Sarkozy also hinted that Obama had given his support to the candidacy of French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to become the next head of the IMF, replacing her disgraced compatriot Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The arrangement whereby the post is reserved for a European is contested by emerging economies.