US President Barack Obama and Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff watch a video introduction to the Open Government Partnership event in New York Sept 20, 2011. [Photo/Agencies]

NEW YORK/SAO PAULO - Brazil is working with other large emerging markets to provide help for troubled members of the euro zone, President Dilma Rousseff told US President Barack Obama on Tuesday, according to an official.

Rousseff did not provide details about what form that help might take during a short meeting with Obama in New York, the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Rousseff's comments highlighted the eagerness of Brazil and other developing countries to try to ease the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone before the problems spread any further across the globe. Brazil has already purchased some European debt and will try to coordinate other help with its partners in the BRICS group of emerging markets at a separate meeting in Washington later this week.

The BRICS group also includes Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Rousseff and Obama also agreed that Europe needs to show it has both the resources and political will to deal with its problems, the official said.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega are set to meet in Washington in the next few days to keep discussing the European crisis.

Obama and Rousseff "felt that more in-depth discussions about those challenges ... are needed before the G20 meeting in November and they agreed that the most appropriate moment (for those discussions) will be the meeting between US Treasury Secretary Geithner and minister Mantega in Washington," Brazil's Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota told reporters.

One of the subjects that might be on the agenda of that meeting is Brazil's idea that major emerging market countries make billions of dollars in new funds available to the International Monetary Fund, as a way to help ease the crisis in the euro zone.

Mantega is expected to make such a proposal at a meeting of the BRICS group in Washington later this week, Brazilian government sources told Reuters on Monday.

The meeting between Rousseff and Obama in New York lasted a little less than half an hour, Patriota said. The Brazilian president congratulated Obama for his plan to create jobs and was invited by Obama to visit the United States early next year, Patriota said.