Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras lashed out at his country's creditors ahead of critical talks Wednesday, denting hopes of a final debt deal to prevent Athens from defaulting and leaving the euro. The leftist leader flew to Brussels for a crunch meeting with the heads of the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank before eurozone finance ministers try to thrash out an agreement.
But at the last minute Athens said it had rejected new proposals that the EU-IMF lenders had issued in response to the eleventh-hour reform plan submitted by Greece this week to win approval for vital bailout funds. Hardline Germany said there was a long way to go before any deal, while eurozone stocks dipped over doubts that an accord will be ready for EU leaders to rubber-stamp at a summit on Thursday.
"This strange position maybe hides two things: either they do not want an agreement or they are serving specific interests in Greece," Tsipras said just minutes before the talks. "The repeated rejection of equivalent measures by certain institutions never occurred before - neither in Ireland nor Portugal," he tweeted, referring to bailouts to those two countries. Greece and its creditors have been locked in a stand-off since the radical Syriza party was elected in January, with the EU-IMF demanding reforms before unlocking the last 7.2 billion euros ($8.1 billion) of Greece's bailout before it expires on June 30. But time is running desperately short for Greece, which is set to default on a 1.5 billion euro IMF loan repayment also due at the end of the month if it does not get fresh funds within days.
Creditors also propose to increase the level of corporation tax to 28 percent, instead of the Greek plan to raise it to 29 percent from 2016 onwards. The current level is 26 percent. And they want defence expenditure to be slashed by 400 million euros instead of the proposed 200 million euros. Germany insisted that a deal was "unimaginable" without the hardline IMF, believed to be behind the harshest of the measures, on board.
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