Athens braces for critical week - The Best from Greece

Posted on: 28/Nov/2011

With decision on vital rescue loans due Tuesday, Athens makes final push to convince creditors

 

As Greece braces for yet another critical week, with a decision on a crucial sixth tranche of rescue funding set to be made on Tuesday by eurozone finance ministers and a general strike looming on Thursday, the government stressed the importance of additional efforts to safeguard the position of Greece in an increasingly fractured European family.

Addressing a financial roadshow in Thessaloniki on Saturday, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said “a superhuman effort” is needed if Greece is to emerge from a deepening debt crisis. “Greece is in a mortal danger in a Europe that is floundering,”Venizelos said.

The finance minister is to join his eurozone counterparts in Brussels on Tuesday for talks expected to produce a final decision on the disbursement of a sixth installment of funding from last year’s debt deal -- an 8-billion-euro sum without which Greece could face default next month. The ministers’ decision is expected to hinge largely on a letter sent to foreign creditors last week by conservative New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, expressing his commitment to a new debt deal for Greece, hammered out in Brussels last month, but proposing some policy changes. For weeks Samaras had rebuffed demands for written guarantees, insisting that his word should be enough. The head of the right-wing Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), Giorgos Karatzaferis, has written an open letter expressing his support for the debt plan and written guarantees are expected to be provided too by Socialist PASOK leader and former Premier George Papandreou, Bank of Greece Governor Giorgos Provopoulos and current Prime Minister Lucas Papademos.

Papandreou -- in an interview to German magazine Der Spiegel -- admitted to having “made mistakes” while in power but pledged to continue his efforts to keep Greece in the eurozone.

Papademos kept a low profile over the weekend -- following last week’s frantic schedule of talks with EU officials and briefings in Athens with the leaders of his coalition. In a bid to broaden consensus, the PM is to meet with the heads of smaller parties today and tomorrow, including the Communist Party, the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), the Democratic Left and the Democratic Alliance. He will likely have little joy as most of these parties have been critical of ongoing austerity.

 

 

source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_31475_27/11/2011_416645

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