February 11, 2012
The leaders of Greece's two major parties Saturday moved to rally their lawmakers behind painful austerity measures the country must take to gain a fresh bailout, ahead of a key parliamentary vote Sunday.
Speaking to a meeting of fellow Socialists, party chief George Papandreou said Greece was one step away from securing that badly needed aid package, and warned that failure to do so would lead to default and bring "chaos" to the country.
"Now is the moment of responsibility of all of us for the sake of the country," Mr. Papandreou said. "We are talking about making the big changes that have to happen so that Greece can address all the causes of the crisis."
Just minutes later, conservative New Democracy party leader Antonis Samaras, issued a similar call to his party deputies commanding them to toe the party line in the vote, now expected for Sunday night at 2200 GMT.
Separately, the Greek finance minister told his party's deputies Saturday that troika of Greece's lenders--the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund--proposed that Greece receive an additional €15 billion ($19.9 billion) on top of the agreed but not yet secured €130 billion ($172 billion) bailout to keep the country funded over the next three years.
More
No comments:
Post a Comment