NICOSIA/LONDON: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ruled out seeking aid from Russia and said yesterday he would pursue negotiations for a new debt agreement with European partners, but saw little sign of compromise from Germany.
Tsipras and his finance minister Yanis Varoufakis are touring European capitals this week in a diplomatic offensive to replace Greece’s bailout accord with the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund “troika”.
“We are in substantial negotiations with our partners in Europe and those that have lent to us. We have obligations towards them,” Tsipras said at a news conference in Cyprus during his first foreign visit as prime minister.
“Right now, there are no other thoughts on the table,” he said, when asked whether Greece would seek aid from Russia, which has suggested it could be willing to listen to a request for support from Athens. The remarks on Russia could reassure EU partners shocked last week when the Tsipras government initially appeared to reject the bloc’s consensus on economic sanctions against Moscow. Greece eventually signed up last Thursday to extending existing sanctions against Russia for six more months.
Greece, unable to borrow on the markets and facing pressure to extend the current support agreement when it expires on February 28, is looking for a bridging agreement that would give it breathing space to propose a new debt arrangement.
It has so far met a tough line from European partners, above all from Germany. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that Berlin would not accept any unilateral changes to Greece’s debt programme. “We want Greece to continue going down this successful path in the interests of Greece and the Greeks but we will not accept one-sided changes to the programme,” he said.
Tsipras also said that eurozone debt was a crisis for the whole continent. “Europe is in crisis, not just Greece and Cyprus... Europe then should take brave decisions so that the growth agenda returns,” he said. He was to travel on to Italy today and then France tomorrow as he presses his campaign for a renegotiation of Greece’s €240bn bailout over strong opposition from Germany. Tsipras said it was time to end the current system of supervision of indebted nations’ economies under which economists from the so-called troika of lenders carry out regular compliance reviews which must be passed for bailout loans to be disbursed.
“It’s been accepted that this mechanism doesn’t have legal institutional status at a European level,” he said.
Tsipras’s government has said it will no longer work with the troika and will forego any further bailout loans but will look to negotiate directly with its creditors instead. But he stressed that reforms would have to be agreed with other EU member states, as he kept up his efforts to reassure partners and creditors alike that his government would not act unilaterally.
Earlier, Tsipras held talks with Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades as he visited the island, which is the traditional first port of call for all new Greek leaders. The Cyprus president is not an ideological soulmate of Tsipras.
Meanwhile, on a visit to Paris on Sunday, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said Athens is relying on the ECB to maintain a financial lifeline while his week-old government negotiates new bailout terms.
Kicking off his diplomatic charm offensive, Varoufakis also said Greece did not want the next promised loan tranche of €7.2bn in funds from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and the ECB. “It’s not that we don’t need the money; we’re desperate,” he said at a joint press conference with his French counterpart Michel Sapin. Reuters/AFP
