NYTimes | As Greece
enters a pivotal week in its economic crisis, tensions between the
Greek government and the country’s international lenders have reached a
boiling point. The government is resisting a push by the International Monetary Fund to impose additional austerity measures that Greek leaders fear could destabilize the shaky coalition government.
Although those talks are expected to resume later this week, they have
been suspended since an angry exchange last week between the Greek
finance minister and the I.M.F.’s top negotiator for Greece.
The impasse has elevated tensions here as Greece braces for a nationwide
general strike planned on Wednesday that threatens to bring public
services to a halt. The Greek people are increasingly angry over the
prospect that public salaries and pensions will be cut again in a
last-ditch bid to secure a new loan installment of 31.5 billion euros,
or $40.7 billion, from Greece’s creditors.
The Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras,
plans to address the nation this week to bolster support for the
austerity package. He has already publicly warned his center-right
party, New Democracy, that he will oust lawmakers of the party failing
to back the package once it comes up for a vote, probably in early
October.
Various European leaders have gone out of their way in recent weeks to
voice support for the Greek government, which came to power in June. And
they have praised the Samaras government’s renewed commitment to taking
difficult steps to revamp the economy despite concern that Greece could
be a ward of its euro zone partners for years to come. Chancellor Angela Merkel
of Germany has joined France in declaring that Greece must stay in the
euro union to avoid even the perception that the union would be
vulnerable to a wider breakup.
In this political calculus, Ms. Merkel and others see Mr. Samaras as the
last best hope for Greece. They worry that if the government teeters,
new elections might be called in which his party could lose power to the
increasingly popular leftist party Syriza, led by the political
maverick Alexis Tsipras. Mr. Tsipras advocates tearing up the loan
agreement with Greece’s international creditors. That would raise the
risk of default and an eventual exit from the euro.
The situation is also being monitored by Chinese officials, who would be
reluctant to see a Greek exit from the euro destabilize the European
Union, China’s largest trading partner.
“We want the euro zone to stay intact,” Du Quiwen, the Chinese
ambassador to Greece, said in an interview on Monday. “If something in
Europe goes seriously wrong, if there’s a major mishap in the euro zone,
it would put pressure on the world economy and it would not be in the
interest of the world community or China.”
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