The United States supported a constructive role of the International Monetary Fund in reinforcing economic reforms in Europe, but increased IMF involvement could not substitute tough reforms of the eurozone economies, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Wednesday.

The U.S. does not want eurozone economies to look to the IMF for funding help instead of taking more aggressive reforms by themselves, Geithner said at an event hosted by the Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, signalling the IMF's largest shareholder would not help the IMF to seek additional lending resources at this stage.

Treasury officials, including Geithner, have said in recent months that the U.S. had no intention to help replenish the IMF's lending coffers.

Boosting the IMF's lending resources was a highlight of the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank, scheduled to kick off on April 20.

European policymakers have taken important steps in the past six months to address the eurozone debt crisis to ensure that a catastrophic meltdown could be avoided, but more efforts were still needed, Geithner said.

On the front of the U.S. economic recovery, Geithner noted that the U.S. economy has registered an across-the-board recovery, but the housing sector still remained weak.

Fiscal pressure was one of the challenges facing the world's largest economy, so tax reforms targeted at increasing the government's revenue was critical, Geithner added.

He also lauded China's recent decision to widen the yuan's daily trading band against the U.S. dollar as a "significant" and "promising" step.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet