Greece to seek extra debt relief as 'reward': Greek PM
Antonis Samaras said country had undertaken 'the biggest public debt restructuring in its history'
ATHENS: (AFP) - Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said Sunday that Greece would seek additional debt relief as a reward for a massive belt-tightening effort to slash its colossal debt.
Samaras, in an opinion piece in Kathimerini newspaper, said Athens would "seek new relief," underscoring that the country had undertaken "the biggest public debt restructuring in its history".
"A country that doesn t have a sustainable debt cannot borrow from the markets," Samaras wrote, amid plans by Athens plans to end the EU part of its 240 billion-euro ($300 billion) international bailout at the end of the year.
According to the Greek statistics agency, the country is set to post growth of 0.7 percent in the third quarter, ending six years of recession.
A major challenge was to certify the sustainability of Greece s debt, Samaras said. Samaras said the opposition s insistence on a debt writeoff was a risky tactic that could sabotage the gains made so far. "Those who have such things in mind are leading Greece backward -- either to bankruptcy, which we narrowly avoided, or to a euro exit, which we narrowly averted," he said.
In an effort to get voters back on side, the right-of-centre Samaras has promised Greeks a complete end to years of painful rescue conditions that have become political poison in Athens. These efforts to end austerity in Greece, whose financial meltdown nearly destroyed the euro, come at a time of wider concern that the eurozone could fall back into recession.
Earlier this year, Portugal and Ireland managed to end their huge EU-IMF bailouts without resorting to further assistance or oversight from the EU or IMF.
