Tsipras Denies Greece Will Seek Another Bailout
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras denied that Greece would need yet another international bailout, and a poll showed surging support for his government even though it had to back down to win a temporary lifeline from the euro zone.
Tsipras dismissed German suggestions that Greece was trying to blackmail the euro zone. But he said his government had requested a reduction in the country’s mountainous debt, despite the insistence of its European and IMF creditors that Athens must meet its obligations in full.
Greece has already received two bailouts totalling 240 billion euros, and Tsipras’s radical Syriza party won elections a month ago on promises to walk away from the EU/IMF programmes which imposed austerity and reform on a weary nation, Reuters reported.
But with the Greek banking system facing the loss of emergency European funding without a bailout deal, Athens had to accept last week a four-month extension to the programme which had been due to expire on Saturday.
In a televised speech to his cabinet, Tsipras rejected suggestions that he would be forced to return cap in hand to the international creditors when the temporary deal expires.
“Some have bet on a third bailout, on the possibility of a third bailout in June. I’m very sorry but once again we will disappoint them,” he said. “Let them forget a third bailout. The Greek people put an end to bailouts with their vote.”
Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan, one of the Eurogroup members who backed the extension, said last week that once Greece was in a “safe space for the next four months”, negotiations would begin on a third programme.
Greek state finances remain in a serious condition, with tax revenue falling one billion euros below target in January and the country still frozen out of international debt markets.
As Tsipras addressed his cabinet in the parliament building, thousands of KKE communist party supporters waving red hammer and sickle flags demonstrated outside on Syntagma Square.