Brussels--Greece is to make "counter-proposals" on a deal to unlock vital bailout funds Saturday, after eurozone officials said they had discussed the possibility of Athens defaulting if the talks fail.
Greek officials have so far rejected what they characterise as "pressure" from creditors, and will send a senior delegation to Brussels to submit its own plans on Saturday to try and end a five-month standoff.
The furious back-and-forth took place a day after the International Monetary Fund's negotiating team flew back to Washington from Brussels because of major differences, with a June 18 deadline looming for a deal.
The Athens stock market dropped 6 percent after it emerged that senior eurozone officials meeting in Bratislava on Thursday had war-gamed "worst case" scenarios of Greece not being able to pay its bills.
"In discussions, a default was mentioned as one of the scenarios that can happen when everything goes wrong," a eurozone official told AFP on condition of anonymity after the Bratislava talks.
Another official added: "It was a preparation for the worst case. Countries wanted to know what was going on."
The long-running saga over Greece's refusal to agree on reforms demanded by its creditors is set to reach a climax at a meeting of finance ministers in Luxembourg on June 18.
A deal to unlock the last 7.2 billion euros ($8.1 billion) of Greece's international bailout is needed next week to give national parliaments time to approve it before the bailout expires on June 30.
Greece faces a huge 1.6 billion euro payment to the IMF at the end of the month and a further 3.4 billion euros to the European Central Bank on July 20.
Member states are "increasingly raising questions on what are the possible ways forward in this situation," said Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission vice-president for the euro.
"We have to evaluate all the possibilities," Lithuania's Finance Minister Rimantas Sadzius told AFP.
AFP
