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live The meeting between Lucas Papademos and the party leaders ended without consensus

05 February 2012 / 22:02:50  GRReporter
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The meeting between the Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and the leaders of the three parties, who support his office, ended without result. During the negotiations, which continued for more than 5 hours Papademos tried to convince them to vote in favour of the financial stabilization reform.

All three politicians - George Papandreou from PASOK, Antonis Samaras from New Democracy and George Karadzeferis from the far right LAOS, are unwilling to support the measures required by the supervisory Troika, because they are not popular and will cost them many votes during the next election. Those measures are the removal of the 13th and 14th salary, reduction of the minimum monthly salary from 751 to 600 Euros and reduction of pension supplements and public sector employees.

With its endless delays and half-measures Athens has already exhausted the patience of Brussels and Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker said unequivocally today that if there is no news tonight, Greece should be preparing for bankruptcy in March. If Greece does not apply these measures it will not receive the financial aid package of 130 billion Euros. Without it, the country will not be able to pay its obligations to creditors, which expire in March, and will be forced to officially declare bankcruptcy.

The representatives of the private creditors of Greece have been in Athens since yesterday and are ready to remit 100 billion Euros of the Greek debt, only if the country agrees with the European Union on a second aid package. Negotiations with them continued for weeks and are now to be finalized, but they are also threatened by failure, if politicians find themselves unable to support the reforms.

"I will not support measures that will lead to the outbreak of a revolution, which will then spread throughout Europe," said George Karadzeferis while leaving the residence of the Prime Minister. "I will try to resist these measures with all my strength, because they will lead to deepening of the recession," said in turn Antonis Samaras. George Papandreou is still in the residence of the Prime Minister. A general written notice from the three party leaders is expected. Later in the evening, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos will convene an extraordinary meeting of his Cabinet.

Reuters reported from Brussels that the European Commission is extremely disappointed by the Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos. The agency referred to an anonymous source who claims that representatives of the supervisory Troika sought Venizelos for talks, but at that time he was engaged in partisan ambitions in PASOK. As already known, he is the main contender for the leadership post, which is currently occupied by George Papandreou.

Tags: Papademos Greece aid package debt creditors PASOK New Democracy
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