Greece debt talks in ‘ultra difficult’ stage
LUXEMBOURG: Negotiations to fix a massive write-down with private investors of Greek sovereign debt are at an “ultra difficult” stage, eurozone chief Jean-claude Juncker said on Thursday (Friday in Manila).
“These negotiations are ultra difficult,” the Luxembourg prime minister told school pupils in a blunt address, referring to the key first condition for a global agreement on a second financial rescue for Athens.
Juncker, who chairs the Eurogroup that gathers finance ministers from the 17 currency partners, joked that the progress of the negotiations meant “this will be the last happy moment of the day for me.”
In Athens, Greek government spokesman Pantelis Kapsis also said that the talks were proving “very difficult,” telling Mega private television that the “cost” of the decisions facing the caretaker coalition led by Lucas Papademos “will not be anodyne for our citizens.”
In Frankfurt, the chairman of the organization negotiating for the banks said that he was “likely” to go to Greece this weekend, although he also suggested that the private sector banks were willing to drag the fight out for “weeks” in order to wring out more concessions.
“We are very close and hopefully will reach an agreement within the next weeks or days,” said Josef Ackermann, head of Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest bank, who heads up the Institute of International Finance representing the banks.
Private- sector creditors holding about 200 billion euros worth of Greek sovereign bonds are being asked to accept a writedown in value of “70 percent or more,” Ackermann said.