Athens---Greece was under pressure Saturday to finalise reform proposals to keep its loan lifeline open as part of an EU debt deal, with its anti-austerity prime minister warning of "real difficulties" ahead.
The new hard-left government in Athens has until Monday to convince its sceptical European creditors that it could piece together a credible set of alternative fiscal reforms.
"The list will be submitted and I am absolutely certain it will be approved," Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said after a cabinet meeting.
"We are drawing it up as we speak, it will be completed tomorrow," he told reporters.
After a last-ditch negotiation on Friday that saw his government dramatically climb down from its radical agenda, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras insisted that Athens had achieved an "important negotiating success" which "cancels out austerity."
In a televised address, Tsipras said his government had foiled a plan by "blind conservative forces" in Greece and abroad to bankrupt the country at the end of the month, when its European bailout had been scheduled to expire.
But as fears of a disastrous Greek exit from the eurozone receded, the 40-year-old premier warned that the "real difficulties" lie ahead. He said his government would now focus on negotiating a new reform blueprint with Greece's creditors by June.
The government which came to power last month pledging to end deeply unpopular austerity measures and renegotiate Greece's huge debt, had asked for a six-month loan assistance until it can submit its four-year reform plans.
Instead, it received a maximum of four months in which to reach an agreement with its eurozone partners, but no money to tide it over in the meantime.
French President Francois Hollande tried to sweeten the pill for Greeks, talking about a "good compromise" that gives Athens time to finalise its reform plans.
But the government's domestic rivals were less generous.
"If this is 'successful negotiation', what would count as a fiasco?" asked conservative former prime minister Antonis Samaras.
The opposition socialists said the deal took Greece "kilometres backwards" and accused the new government of engaging in "theatrics for domestic consumption".
- Greeks 'yielded' -
"From a symbolic and therefore political point of view, the Greeks yielded on everything," Daniel Gros, director of the centre for European policy studies, told Italy's La Stampa daily.
"They can hope to receive nothing now... only to give," Gros said.
Athens said it had averted threatened cuts to pensions and tax hikes, and had persuaded its European creditors to drop unrealistic budget demands.
Some Greeks on Saturday said even this was better than nothing.
"The room for negotiation was certainly limited, but this deal is in the right direction and makes us feel relieved," said civil servant Alexandros Mylonas.
"This is a very positive development," added Nikos, a pensioner who declined to give his surname.
"We could certainly do no worse than where we were before," he told AFP
AFP
