Greek party leaders seek deal as bankruptcy looms

Under intense pressure from bailout creditors, Greek party leaders on Tuesday will seek a long-delayed agreement on harsh cutbacks demanded to avoid looming bankruptcy, as a general strike disrupted public services nationwide.

Heads of the three parties backing the interim government will confer with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos on new income cuts and job losses, which Greece's eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund are demanding to keep the country's vital rescue loans flowing.

A general strike against the impending cutbacks stopped train and ferry services nationwide, while many schools and banks were closed and state hospitals worked on skeleton staff.

Unions were planning two separate protest marches in central Athens, which will be closely policed as previous demonstrations over the past two years of economic pain have turned violent. In May 2010, three workers died in an Athens bank torched by rioters.

On Monday, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos' government caved in to demands to cut civil service jobs, announcing 15,000 positions would go this year, out of a total 750,000. The decision breaks a major taboo, as state jobs had been protected for more than a century to prevent political purges by governments seeking to appoint their supporters.

The EU and IMF are also pressing Greece to deeply cut the euro751 ($979) minimum wage, which can lead to knock-on reductions in private sector salaries and even unemployment benefits. Unions and employers' federations alike have deplored the measure as unfair and unnecessary.

In the private sector, unemployment has hit a record high of more than 19 percent amid a fifth year of recession.

Athens must placate its creditors to clinch a euro130 billion ($170 billion) bailout deal from the eurozone and the IMF and avoid a March default on its bond repayments.

"It is clear that there is a lot of pressure being put on the country. A lot of pressure is being placed on the Greek people," Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said during a break in talks with EU-IMF debt inspectors late Monday.

He called on coalition parties to work more closely together.

"No one is as strong as Hercules on his own to face the Lernaean Hydra," a swamp monster in Greek mythology, he said. "We must all, together, fight this battle, without petty party motives and slick moves."

A disorderly bankruptcy by Greece would likely lead to its exit from the eurozone, a situation that European officials have insisted is impossible because it would hurt other weak countries like Portugal.

But on Tuesday, the EU commissioner Neelie Kroes, in chage of the bloc's digital policies, said Greece's exit wouldn't be a disaster.

Kroes told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that "It's always said: if you let one nation go, or ask one to leave, the entire structure will collapse. But that is just not true."

Greece has been kept solvent since May 2010 by payments from a euro110 billion ($145 billion) international rescue loan package. When it became clear the money would not be enough, a second bailout was decided last October.

As well as the austerity measures, the bailout also depends on separate talks with banks and other private bondholders to forgive euro100 billion ($131.6 billion) in Greek debt. The private investors have been locked in negotiations over swapping their current debt for a cash payment and new bonds worth 50 percent less than the original face value, with longer repayment terms and a lower interest rate.

Greek government officials say they expect private investors to take losses of up to 70 percent on the value of their bonds.

However, the EU-IMF bailout has to be secured for the deal with private investors to go ahead as about euro30 billion from the bailout will be used as the cash payment in the bond swap deal.

Greece's coalition party leaders held a first key meeting on the austerity measures on Sunday, and postponed a second round of talks by a day so Papademos could complete negotiations with EU-IMF debt inspectors that ended early Tuesday.

The leaders have already agreed to cut 2012 spending by 1.5 percent of gross domestic product — about euro3.3 billion ($4.3 billion) — improve competitiveness by slashing wages and non-wage costs, and re-capitalize banks without nationalizing them. But the details remain to be worked out.

Creditors are also demanding spending cuts in defense, health and social security.

European Commission spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio said Greece is already "beyond the deadline" to end the talks.

And German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that "time is pressing," and "something has to happen quickly."