Athens--New Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sought to calm tensions with international creditors on Saturday, saying his hard-left government was not seeking conflict but just needed "time to breathe".
The Syriza-led government, which came to office last week promising to renegotiate Greece's huge bailout, clashed with the head of the eurozone finance ministers in their first meeting on Friday.
But in a conciliatory statement issued to the Bloomberg news agency, ahead of a tour intended to win over European allies to his anti-austerity cause, Tsipras said he expected all sides to reach a "mutually beneficial agreement".
"No side is seeking conflict and it has never been our intention to act unilaterally on Greek debt," he said in the statement, published in English.
He added: "Our common interest is the economic stability and recovery for our common home, Europe."
Tsipras insisted his government's determination to end the painful reforms imposed on Greece in return for European Central Bank, EU and International Monetary Fund loans did not mean it would renege on its commitments.
"My obligation to respect the clear mandate of the Greek people with respect to ending the policies of austerity and returning to a growth agenda, in no way entails that we will not fulfil our loan obligations to the ECB or the IMF," he said.
"On the contrary, it means that we need time to breathe and create our own medium-term recovery program, which amongst other things will incorporate the targets of primary balanced budgets and radical reforms to address the issues of tax evasion, corruption and clientelistic policies."
He added: "The deliberation with our European partners has just begun.
"Despite the fact that there are differences in perspective, I am absolutely confident that we will soon manage to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, both for Greece and for Europe as a whole."
AFP
