With Greece facing a looming deadline to roll over $27 billion in debt, the countries of the euro zone are arguing nastily among themselves about whether and how to toss Greece to the tender mercies of the International Monetary Fund. The dispute is partly about money, but it is even more about politics and pride, and it is being conducted in the shadow of another potential crisis in Portugal, whose debt was downgraded on Wednesday. The euro zone has no settled mechanism for dealing with these debt crises, and the search for one is generating tensions between France and Germany, between the European Commission and its member states, and even internal political frissons in Germany and, especially, in France. There President Nicolas Sarkozy, just battered by voters in regional elections, does not want to see a possible Socialist rival, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the monetary fund, riding to the rescue of Greece. Berlin's resistance to a European solution, however, is giving Paris little choice. A fund rescue poses an affront to European pride, given the United States' important role in the fund. But European taxpayers, and not only Germans, are reluctant to bail out the Greeks, and creation of a European version of the fund is considered too complicated and in any case could not be arranged in time. The maneuvering is taking place before a European Union summit meeting beginning Thursday in Brussels. There, the Greek prime minister, George A. Papandreou -- who is making painful budget cuts at home -- wants a specific European promise of help to arrange financing at rates closer to the prevailing market rates of around 3 percent than the 6 percent or more the financial markets are demanding. Germany, deeply concerned about becoming the answer to the debt problems of all of Europe's endangered economies, wants Greece to pay a penalty for its former profligacy. But without a firm promise of European assistance, Papandreou has threatened to go to the monetary fund. Berlin's answer has been, essentially: go right ahead. Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, is facing growing domestic political pressures and has all but ruled out any specific European plan at this meeting, promising only that Berlin will not let Greece default. She has also suggested that countries that consistently break the rules should be tossed out of the euro zone. While Merkel, with support from the Dutch and the Italians, is pushing Athens to the monetary fund, the French are arguing for a European solution. Paris is supported by most of Europe's prominent officials: the European Commission president, Jos Manuel Barroso; Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of a group of euro zone finance ministers; and, more quietly, the head of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, who has said that the fund's involvement is not appropriate. But a European solution without Germany is nearly impossible, so France is softening its position on the fund. Germany and France have already squabbled loudly over their respective economic strategies. France has urged Berlin to increase domestic consumption in the interest of European solidarity, while Germany has criticized France for building up too much debt. Europe and Greece would like Athens to have time to carry out its fiscal adjustment without damaging its weak economic growth, so that the private sector can continue to finance the debt at moderate interest rates, said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of Pimco, the large investment company. With the Europeans split over what to do, El-Erian said, 'the markets are losing clarity, and the Greeks are under pressure again.' The most logical outcome, he said, would be to involve the monetary fund, with euro zone countries as co-financiers. 'The Europeans will have to swallow their pride to go outside the family,' El-Erian said, 'and they will need the IMF to be a more objective evaluator' of Greek efforts to cut public spending. But even here, experts point to potential pitfalls. 'The sums involved are quite large, and no one knows quite how much of that gap the IMF can fill,' said Philip Whyte, an economist at the Center for European Reform in London. 'Even 10 or 11 billion euros would be a big help,' he said, but it would need to be supplemented by some form of European loan, bilateral or collective, particularly with Greece needing to roll over an additional $44 billion later this year. But the fund's involvement remains 'neuralgic' for the Europeans, partly because Europeans think the fund is overly dominated by Washington, and also because 'if they can't come up with a European solution, they think it will undermine the credibility of the euro zone as a whole,' Whyte said. Christophe Barbier, the editor of the French weekly L'Express, said that going to the fund would be seen as a humiliation. 'The IMF is for Somalia, Mauritania, not for Europe,' he said. 'When it's a country on the periphery, Iceland or Hungary, why not? But Greece, it's the euro! Greece, it's the mother of all European democracies. It's a question of pride, and of civilizations.' Pride is also a serious factor for internal politics, Barbier noted. With Sarkozy battered by regional elections and his re-election as president in 2012 no longer a given, there is a new focus on Strauss-Kahn. The intertwined issues of Greece and French politics are obviously sensitive. Strauss-Kahn's spokesman, contacted by e-mail, said that the managing director was too busy to be interviewed, that 'he's also said about all he'll say on Greece,' and that other fund staff members were too busy to be interviewed, even on background. One reason is that any solution to Greece's problems will lay the groundwork for possible bailouts of Portugal, Spain and Italy, since they, in differing ways, share Greece's problems of high debt, high wages, low growth and low productivity. But Greece alone, though it is a small part of the euro zone economy, is daunting. 'The Greece situation is really severe, and Greece is asking both the IMF and the EU to take a huge risk,' said Charles Calomiris, professor of finance at Columbia Business School. The break in interest rates it is seeking would represent 'a subsidy of several billion euros for a couple of years, and that's not a lot, just a postponement for breathing room' on the $150 billion it will need over two years -- and that money must be repaid. But for Greece to accomplish that, Calomiris said, would require a much larger cut in spending than what is currently contemplated: up to 25 percent over three years, unless Greece can make big advances to limit tax avoidance and corruption, and shrink the black economy. To steady their own ships, Portugal, Spain and Italy will also have to endure considerable pain. 'It will test all these countries,' he said. 'What an irony that a pact designed to unite France and Germany is dividing them.' 