Greek PM Tsipras set for crunch debt talks in Brussels
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- Europe
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is due to take part in talks in Brussels, where he will be presented with a new plan to solve Greece's debt crisis.
International creditors will detail economic reforms needed if Greece is to receive further funding.
Mr Tsipras has already put forward new proposals of his own that he says would involve painful concessions.
A €300m (£216m) payment from cash-strapped Greece to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is due on Friday.
The draft deal has been put together by the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank following emergency talks late on Monday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.
The details remain under wraps but the document is believed to call for pensions changes and an overhaul of labour laws. There are also reports of ambitious targets for Greece's primary surplus - the amount by which tax revenues exceed public spending, not including interest payments.
'Division'
Mr Tsipras will hear details of the plan when he meets European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the eurozone's finance ministers, on Wednesday evening.
As he prepared to leave Athens with several key ministers, the Greek leader said he was going to meet Mr Juncker to discuss his government's proposals, and had not received any new documents from lenders.
He said he was certain Europe's leaders would "sign up to realism". "We need unity, we must avoid division," he said.
Greece in numbers
€320bn
Greece's debt mountain
€240bn
European bailout
- €56bn Greece owes Germany
- 177% country's debt-to-GDP ratio
- 25% fall in GDP since 2010
- 25% Greek unemployment rate
Reuters
Mr Juncker's spokeswoman dampened hopes of an imminent deal, telling reporters that no "final outcome" was expected from Wednesday's talks,
'Patience wearing thin'
However, in a sign that all sides are pushing for a solution, a conference call was planned between Mr Tsipras, Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande, a French official said.
The BBC's Chris Morris in Brussels says that while this deal may not quite be a take-it-or-leave-it offer, there appears to be little room for manoeuvre.
Patience is wearing thin after months of acrimonious negotiations, he says.
Mr Tsipras's far-left Syriza party won elections in January on a pledge to oppose deeply unpopular austerity measures imposed by Greece's creditors.
Breaking those promises would be a bitter pill for the Greek prime minister to swallow, our correspondent adds.
However, failure to reach a deal could trigger a Greek default and a potential exit from the eurozone.
On Tuesday, Mr Tsipras said he had submitted "a realistic plan for Greece to exit the crisis".
He said the 47-page plan included "concessions that will be difficult", but Mr Dijsselbloem said "we are nowhere near far enough."
Syriza's parliamentary group chairman Nikos Philis warned that if "we have no prospect of a deal on Friday or Monday, we won't pay the money", referring to the 5 June debt instalment to the IMF.
Eurozone still in denial about Greece - Robert Peston, BBC Economics editor
There is something wonderfully mad about the idea that if Greece's creditors can agree on a bailout, which they have done, that represents important progress.
Because, as won't have escaped your notice, the biggest problem all along has been that the youngish Syriza government of the debtor, Greece itself, hates the conditions imposed by the creditors for the mooted rescue.
The fundamental disagreement between Greece and its lenders - eurozone nations, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund - is over the degree of further austerity to which Greece must commit in order to receive 7.2bn euros of additional credit.
But although for the pride of the creditors, the question of whether Greece is obliged to generate a surplus on its budget, excluding interest payments, of a bit more than zero or 3%, feels like a world of difference - it is a rounding error compared with the money Greece owes them, which is equivalent to 180% of Greek GDP.
Friday's payment is the first of four totalling €1.5bn that Greece is due to pay to the IMF in June.
It is understood Greece could repay all the instalments in a single transaction at the end of the month, although it has not yet notified the IMF that it wishes to do so.
The country remains in a four-month deadlock with international creditors over the release of €7.2bn in remaining bailout funds.
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