ATHENS: Greece has said that it would not ask for a new rescue package from its international creditors if they would simply restructure its debt.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said in an interview with a Greek newspaper Saturday that Greece can do without a new bailout, but “one of the conditions for this to happen is an important restructuring of the [current] debt.” However, its creditors, the European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have considered that impossible.
Although Varoufakis called the Eurozone “a shaky common monetary system” that “if not changed, will die,” he dismissed the possibility of leaving the euro group. It was “one thing to say we shouldn’t have joined the euro and it is another to say that we have to leave,” said Varoufakis, because backtracking now would lead to “an unforeseen negative situation”.
Athens resumed talks with its creditors last week, in an attempted to unlock the $8 billion last payment of its EU-IMF current bailout package. Greece is struggling to pay salaries and pensions without that payment. A May 12 deadline is fast approaching, when the county has to pay over a billion dollars in debt and interest for repayment to the IMF.
