Greece’s Endgame Nears as Tsipras Warns Bell May Toll for Europe

[Purveyor]

by Nikos Chrysoloras
5:01 PM EDT
May 31, 2015

Greece faces a week of tough decisions as negotiations over a financial lifeline edged closer toward endgame with creditors showing no signs of budging over what it will take for them to release more money.

As another of the government’s self-imposed deadlines for securing a deal on its finances slipped away, disagreements between the two sides on budget targets persisted, a person familiar with the matter said. Greece must make four payments totaling almost 1.6 billion euros ($1.78 billion) to the International Monetary Fund this month and its bailout package backed by the euro region expires at the end of June.

While Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wrote in French newspaper Le Monde that any intransigence wasn’t the fault of his four-month-old administration, a senior German lawmaker said it was down to Greece to adhere to reforms agreed to before Tsipras took power. An international official who asked not to be identified said creditors were discussing a deal to be presented to Greece as a way of ending the impasse.

“The lack of an agreement so far is not due to the supposed intransigent, uncompromising and incomprehensible Greek stance,” Tsipras wrote in the article published on Sunday. “It is due to the insistence of certain institutional actors on submitting absurd proposals and displaying a total indifference to the recent democratic choice of the Greek people.”

With technical talks yielding no breakthrough, Tsipras is seeking the intervention of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. The three leaders held a call on Sunday to discuss what happens next, with a German government official calling them “constructive.” Merkel and Hollande are scheduled to meet in Berlin on Monday.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-31/greece-s-endgame-nears-as-tsipras-warns-bell-may-toll-for-europe