Brussels--Greece and its creditors on Tuesday ruled out any bailout deal to avoid bankruptcy at a make-or-break meeting next week, as the IMF said Athens may need debt relief to survive its crisis.
Athens blamed divisions between its international creditors for a three-month impasse in talks aimed at unblocking 7.2 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in bailout cash.
Hoping to win breathing space and to avoid a possible catastrophic exit from the eurozone, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis led a high-level delegation on a tour of European capitals.
Ahead of a meeting of eurozone ministers on Monday in Brussels, hopes had been high for an end to the standoff over the radical left government's refusal to implement reforms in exchange for the funds.
But with payments of about one billion euros ($1.1 billion) to the IMF due over the next few days, Greece furiously blamed the creditors for a hold-up that daily increases the risk of Athens leaving the euro.
"Serious divergences and contradictions between the creditors, the European Union and International Monetary Fund, are hindering the negotiations" with Athens, the Greek government said in a statement.
Greece said this was "the exclusive responsibility" of the EU and IMF, which have together supplied the two bailouts that debt-hit Greece has had since 2010.
Reports said that at the heart of the row are IMF rules under which the fund can only support countries whose debt is judged to be sustainable, and that doubts over Greece were growing.
The IMF said in a statement that in order to make Greece's debt sustainable, the country may need debt relief, but rejected reports that the IMF had pushed for that at last month's eurozone meeting in the Latvian capital Riga.
"IMF European Department Director Poul Thomsen pointed to the tradeoff that needs to be made... namely that the more distant the measures agreed and targets are from the original commitment in 2012, the higher would be the need for additional financing and debt relief," the statement said.
AFP
