The International Monetary Fund, a key player in euro zone bail-outs, today pushed for radical changes in the way the region's debt crisis should be handled. Antonio Borges, the head of the IMF's Europe programme, said the euro zone's bail-out fund should get more firepower and new tools. To help, he said the IMF could intervene in bond markets to keep the crisis from engulfing large economies like Italy and Spain. The surprise proposal would profoundly alter the fund's role in the crisis. It has so far contributed close to €80 billion to euro zone bail-outs, about a third of the total, but never intervened in open markets. "We have a whole set of options that could be put on the table to restore confidence in those countries," Borges said at a news conference in Brussels. His comments are the first open acknowledgment of a radical change in approach by the IMF to the euro zone's debt crisis. The euro zone's debt troubles have intensified severely as most investors expect a default by Greece and fear much larger Italy and Spain will be dragged into the crisis. In public statements until now, IMF officials had insisted on agreements made at a euro zone summit in July, which gave a first range of new powers to the region's bail-out fund and tentatively offered a second, €109 billion bail-out for Greece, with modest losses accepted by banks on their Greek investments. But Borges made clear today that those decisions were no longer sufficient. He said that the €109 billion figure was an estimate based on conditions that have since changed, adding that a new programme needed bigger focus on Greece's massive debt and growth. He said that did not necessarily entail bigger losses for banks and other private Greek bond holders.