Angela Merkel has flatly rejected calls to write off any more Greek debts as she increased tensions with Athens in a race to find a solution to deadlock over the country’s bailout programme.
The German chancellor, who has been among those pressing most strongly to maintain the tough austerity conditions on Athens, indicated that she would not budge over the tough conditions of the multibillion bailout.
“I do not envisage fresh debt cancellation,” she said in an interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper published on Saturday.
“There has already been voluntary debt forgiveness by private creditors, banks have already slashed billions from Greece’s debt.”
Greece’s radical left Syriza party won last Sunday’s elections on an anti-austerity platform, and its leaders have already refused to co-operate