Waashington ? Washington — The world’s economic powers struggled on Friday to get on top of a European debt crisis that is threatening to dump the global economy back into recession.

Officials gathered for three days of discussion pledged to push forward to fulfill the goals of a program in which the Group of 20 major economies promised stronger cooperation to jump-start global growth and help Greece avoid a destabilizing default.

But private economists questioned whether the latest action plan unveiled by the G-20 countries Thursday night went far enough to deal with market concerns that a Greek default is a virtual certainty that threatens to destabilize other highly indebted European countries.

All of the discussions about European debt were occurring around the annual meetings of the 187-nation International Monetary Fund and its sister lending agency, the World Bank.

In advance of those talks, the G-20 finance officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, pledged a bold effort to deal with the debt crisis and encouraged Europe to move quickly to implement its promises to help Greece.

The G-20 statement had little initial impact on the market’s sour mood, with stocks continuing to tumble in Asia.

Europe, which had suffered big losses on Thursday, stabilized and managed to eke out small gains on Friday, as did Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.1 percent to 10,745 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.5 percent to 1,134.

Private analysts, however, predicted more down days for stocks in coming weeks as investors continue to fear the consequences of a Greek debt default.

Jay Bryson, global economist at Wells Fargo Securities, contrasted the G-20 statement Thursday with the bold program the G-20 put forward in London in April 2009 at the height of that financial crisis with billions of dollars of support put forward to boost economic growth and provide a financial backstop for the IMF to rescue countries in trouble.

“You’ve got to back up words with actions,” Bryson said of Thursday’s statement, which he said was an example of “political paralysis.”

Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University’s Martin Smith School of Business, said the great concern is that if Greece doesn’t make further painful cuts in government spending and ends up defaulting on its debt, the shock waves will rock big banks in France and Europe with heavy exposure to Greek debt and will cause fearful investors to flee the bonds of other heavily indebted countries such as Italy and Spain, countries with much bigger economies.