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 After two months of mounting frustration on both sides since Tsipras
was elected with a mandate to end years of austerity, he held three
hours of late night talks to try to break an impasse that risks
sending Athens stumbling of the euro zone.
But while a joint statement by the EU institutions spoke of a
"spirit of mutual trust" and Tsipras said he left feeling more
optimistic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed no money would
be released before Athens implements budget measures and other
reforms that it has so far been reluctant to accept.
The risk of a continued standoff, exactly a month after Greece
secured a last-gasp four-month extension of an EU/IMF bailout, was
highlighted by different descriptions by Tsipras and Merkel about
what reforms Athens would need to launch.
"It is clear that Greece is not obliged to implement recessionary
measures," the 40-year-old leftist premier told reporters, referring
to previously agreed reforms. "Greece will submit its own structural
reforms, which it will implement."
But Merkel, facing mounting resistance in Europe's richest state to
continued lending to keep an erratic partner in the common currency
area, insisted that only the full completion of already approved
measures would satisfy the creditors.
"The reference point is the agreement of Feb. 20," she said. "We
have not changed one iota. You may have heard some of this before.
But then not much has happened in the last few weeks."
Tsipras will make a much anticipated visit to Merkel in Berlin on
Monday. EU officials said that if Greece did come up with a
convincing plan to get its debts under control, euro zone finance
ministers could meet soon to release at least some funds to help it
meet pressing commitments in the coming weeks.
In Athens on Friday, government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis said:
"Once the reforms are submitted, and in a detailed manner, to the
Euro Group when that happens ... then the funding will be unlocked
towards the Greek economy."
The Finance Ministry said it would respond in a "constructive
spirit" to a list of requirements on reforms being drawn up by a
team of technical experts from the creditors - a contrast to an
atmosphere of mutual mistrust which marked encounters with EU
officials in Athens this week.
Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who has offended many of Greece's
partners, especially in Germany, with incendiary comments and
undiplomatic behavior, joined the call for immediate implementation
of the Feb. 20 agreement.
"First, we should work towards ending the toxic ‘blame game’ and the
moralizing finger-pointing which benefit only the enemies of
Europe," he said in a blog post on Friday.
JOINT STATEMENT
The meeting involved Tsipras, Merkel, summit chairman Donald Tusk,
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Jeroen
Dijsselbloem, the chair of the Eurogroup of finance ministers,
European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi and French
President Francois Hollande.
Juncker, Tusk and Dijsselbloem issued a brief joint statement on the
outcome, intended partly to reassure euro zone minnows upset at
being left out of the talks..
"We fully adhere to the agreement of the Eurogroup of Feb. 20. In
the spirit of mutual trust, we are all committed to speed up the
work and conclude it as fast as possible," they said. "The Greek
authorities will have the ownership of the reforms and will present
a full list of specific reforms in the next days."
Juncker said on arrival for a second day of summit talks on Friday
that he was rather more optimistic about resolving the crisis
because "I hadn't observed any convergence of views over the past
weeks but noticed it yesterday".
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Merkel's center-left coalition partner Sigmar Gabriel, the German
economy minister, said he too was "a bit more hopeful".
Those were hardly euphoric sentiments and were reflected in only
cautious gains for Greek financial assets on the markets.
Greece's main stocks index rose 3.2 percent. Two-year government
bond yields fell 89 basis points to 23.85 percent, while 10-year
yields were down 18 bps at 12.10 percent. But two-year yields were
still much higher than before, having doubled in a month and risen
over 3 percentage points on Thursday.
EU officials said the talks were conducted in a business-like manner
- a contrast with some of the ructions over recent weeks that have
seen increasingly bitter confrontation between Greek and German
ministers. That has fueled speculation that some creditor states
might prefer to see Greece quit the euro.
Athens has been kept from bankruptcy by two bailouts since the
global financial crisis, but now risks running out of money within
weeks. On Thursday, Greek banks reported the largest deposit
withdrawals in a month, a sign savers are worried about the outlook
for the country's finances and institutions.
ECB WARY
A person familiar with ECB thinking said Draghi would make clear the
bank would not lift its limit on Greek short-term debt issuance,
which Greece's Marxist finance minister has said is "asphyxiating"
his country. "It's up to Greece to meet its commitments in order to
get money from its creditors," said the person. "The ECB doesn’t do
bridge finance."
Two EU/IMF bailouts totaling 240 billion euros have kept Greece from
bankruptcy since 2010 but its economy has shrunk by25 percent,
partly due to austerity measures imposed by the lenders. It risks
running out of cash without more aid or permission to issue more
short-term debt.
A Greek official said Athens had enough cash to pay a final350
million euro installment of a loan repayment to the International
Monetary Fund on Friday. EU officials said Greece had enough money
to last until at least mid-April.
(Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop, Robert-Jan Bartunekk Jan
Strupczewski, Paul Taylor, Tom Koerkemeier, Andreas Rinke, Elizabeth
Pineau, Adrian Croft, Francesco Guarascio, Foo Yun Chee and Robin
Emmott in Brussels, Michele Martin and Gernot Heller in Berlin and
Costas Pitas and Deepa Babington in Athens; Writing by Alastair
Macdonald; Editing by Paul Taylor)
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