Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou Thursday said he was ready to scrap plans for a referendum on an EU bailout plan, as top European leaders continued to pile the pressure on the embattled leader. As Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos cautioned that Greece needed by December 15 an eight-billion-euro ($11-billion) slice of aid put on ice since the prime minister's shock announcement, Papandreou resisted fresh calls to resign.
"The referendum was never an end in itself," Papandreou told an emergency cabinet meeting called a day after angry EU leaders summoned the prime minister after being wrong-footed by the referendum plan. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted at a meeting of G20 top economies in the southern French city of Cannes that actions, not words, were what mattered.
"What's important is that there is a quick 'Yes' to the October 27 decisions," she added, referring to last week's offer by eurozone leaders to write down Greek debt in exchange for imposing strict fiscal controls. EU President Herman van Rompuy and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso also ratcheted up the heat on Papandreou, saying that Greece had to stick to the EU bailout plan.