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 Having reluctantly conceded to negotiating a third bailout from
international lenders on stringent terms, Tsipras must face down a
rebellion in his anti-austerity Syriza party to push sweeping
pro-market reforms and spending cuts through parliament.
"It's a difficult deal, a deal for which only time will show if it
is economically viable," his finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos,
told lawmakers during a debate on reforms.
Dozens of MPs, including senior Syriza figures and the government's
junior coalition partner, may partially or fully reject the bailout,
forcing Tsipras to rely on pro-European opposition lawmakers to
carry the vote, which is expected after midnight.
A snap election could follow if the prime minister's majority
collapses, and in an early sign of trouble in store, the deputy
finance minister abruptly submitted her resignation and the energy
minister said he would not back the deal.
"The choice between a bailout or catastrophe is a choice made in the
face of terror," Panagiotis Lafazanis, who heads the far-left flank
of Syriza, told reporters.
Adding to the uncertainty, a confidential study by the International
Monetary Fund, seen by Reuters, called for much more debt relief
than European countries, particularly Germany, have been prepared to
countenance so far.
That may cause a dilemma in Germany, which has poured more money
than any other country into rescuing Greece and where, after months
of bad-tempered negotiations with Athens, there is increasingly
vocal opposition to yet another bailout.
Tsipras has described the deal as a "one-way street" imposed on
Greece and the rest of his government shared his scepticism.
"EUROPE'S BANKRUPT CHILD"
Berlin may wince at providing huge debt relief to a country it
scarcely trusts to honor its promises, but insists on having the IMF
in the negotiations to help keep Greece in line.
The European Commission published its own assessment of Greece's
debt burden on Wednesday that also offered the prospect of debt
relief. While ruling out any write-offs, the Commission said debt
reprofiling was possible, as long as Greece implemented the reforms
it has committed to.
Brussels has also proposed 7 billion euros in bridge financing to
keep Greece afloat in July, when it must repay crucial loans to the
European Central Bank. The plan could prove controversial as it
would use the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM), an EU-wide
fund, roping in countries like Britain who balk at their taxpayers
contributing to a rescue.
Washington has stepped up pressure on both sides to secure a deal
with NATO member Greece. U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is making
a short-notice trip to Frankfurt, Berlin and Paris this week to
press for a quick agreement.
Pointing to Washington's importance in the talks, Deputy Prime
Minister Yannis Dragasakis said the deal Tsipras struck with
creditors might never have happened without U.S. pressure.
Although the bailout package is much tougher than the Greek people
could have imagined when they resoundingly rejected a previous offer
from the creditors in a referendum on July 5, most want to keep the
euro.
With banks shut and the threat of a calamitous exit from the
currency bloc hovering over the country if it cannot conclude a
deal, many Greeks see the package as the lesser of two evils.
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"We are Europe's bankrupt child and as a child, Europe has been
supporting us for five years and told us what we needed to do to get
out of this situation," Yannis Theodosia, a 35-year-old civil
engineer. "We did nothing and now we are paying the consequences."
French Finance Minister Michel Sapin on Wednesday played down the
significance of the IMF's call for more debt relief, saying that was
already France's view.
"The IMF is saying the same thing as we are ... we cannot help
Greece if we maintain the same debt reimbursement burden on the
Greek economy," he told BFM TV. As he understood it, Sapin said the
IMF was not calling for an outright haircut.
VOTING NO
Tsipras will put the bailout package to parliament while grappling
with noisy opposition from within his own ranks. Protests on the
streets have so far been relatively muted although civil servants
and pharmacists -- who are a target in the reforms package -- hold a
strike on Wednesday and protest marches by leftwing anti-bailout
groups are also planned.
The latest deal was a major capitulation from Syriza, which stormed
to power promising an end to austerity. Other rebels also included
the fiery parliamentary speaker and the party's parliamentary
spokesman, who both announced they would vote against reforms. Such
outbursts had one right-wing newspaper crowing over the "civil war"
engulfing the party.
Syriza's junior coalition partner said it would vote only for
certain clauses in the bill, rejecting those reforms that went
beyond a previous vote in parliament that had given Tsipras a
mandate to negotiate in Brussels.
In recent weeks, negotiations between Athens and its creditors
became increasingly fractious, with each side accusing the other of
blackmail. Greece painted European countries, particularly Germany,
as bullies, while the creditors said their trust in the Greek
negotiators had all but evaporated.
"We have improved. In the beginning we thought that by sending a
minister and a few consultants we were negotiating, that was very
insufficient," Deputy Prime Minister Dragasakis said in an interview
with Sto Kokkino radio.
"The crisis was ours, the crisis existed before the bailout
memorandum, it was a crisis of the Greek capitalist system. The
memorandums were the medicine to this crisis that proved to be worse
than the illness it was supposed to cure."
(Additional reporting by Georgia Kalovyrna, George Georgiopoulos,
Ingrid Melander, Angeliki Koutantou in ATHENS, Alastair Macdonald
and Jan Strupczewski in BRUSSELS, Mark John and Yann Le Guernigou in
PARIS; writing by Matthias Williams; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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