SUMMARY-Greece wants to acknowledge progress, but still … – swissinfo.ch

By Renee Maltezou and Paul Taylor

BRUSSELS, May 11 (Reuters) – Greece on Monday demanded that the finance ministers of the eurozone admit progress in negotiations on its debt in order to receive grants Block to enable it to alleviate its immediate liquidity crisis, while gaining time to seal an elusive deal that unlocks their rescue funds.

Athens has been pressing for recognition of progress in discussions before the key Eurogroup meeting that takes place later in the day in Brussels.

However, sources familiar with the stance of the European Central Bank (ECB) they said that there was still little progress on specific issues and too much uncertainty for the entity to allow the Greek government to sell more Treasuries short term.

Greece must make a payment of 750 million euros to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday. Greek government spokesman, Gabriel Sakellaridis, told the media that Athens did not relate payment to the IMF with the outcome of negotiations Monday with the Eurogroup, nor contemplated any “plan B”. [ID: nL1N0Y20HA]

“What we want (Athens) Eurogroup today (Monday) is evidence that there have been significant progress in the talks stop,” said Sakellaridis

<. p> For its part, the Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis said that Athens will fulfill this payment.

“Greece always fulfilled its obligations to its creditors and obviously we will do it again tomorrow” , Varoufakis Euronews said.

The German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Varoufakis, were scheduled to meet prior to the meeting of ministers of the Eurozone on Monday. [ID: nL1N0Y209B]

A senior EU official said negotiations had been too slow in the last week and there was no progress on the core issues under discussion: reforms to the labor market and Athens must implement pension and budget targets for this year and next.

Officials in the euro zone believe that Greece has raised enough money to meet its payment obligations until the end of May.

They said that the real deadline for agreement is the end May, allowing parliamentary approval in some euro zone countries, especially Germany, in time to deliver 7,200 million euros remaining bailout funds before the program expires at the end of June.

A senior IMF official said that polls show that three-quarters of Greeks want the country to remain in the single currency bloc and global lender said Athens wanted to make the necessary reforms.

(Additional reporting by George Georgiopoulos and Angeliki Koutantou in Athens, Francesco Guarascio in Brussels, Ingrid Melander in Paris, Krisztina Than and Gergely Szakacs in Budapest. Written by Paul Taylor Published in Spanish by Janisse Huambachano and Marion Giraldo )