Greece Gets 3-Day Ultimatum

IMF, Europe might suspend site visit
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 2, 2013 9:06 AM CDT
Greece Gets 3-Day Ultimatum
State school teacher shout slogans outside the ministry of Administrative Reform during a protest against the austerity measures in central Athens, July 2, 2013.   (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Greece has until this weekend to convince the IMF and Europe that it can meet its bailout conditions, before they call off their current site visit and yank the next tranche of aid, sources tell Reuters. Eurozone finance ministers are meeting on Monday and "all agreed that Greece has to deliver" pledges before that, a source says. If they can't finish the site visit this month, they'll have to put it off until September—which would mean Greece missing out on aid.

Without the aid, Greece will miss an August deadline to redeem $2.7 billion-worth of bonds, and if it fails to do that, IMF rules require that it abandon the bailout altogether. The creditors aren't happy with Greece's progress so far; it's already missed a June deadline to reassign or dismiss 12,500 state workers, and has a $1.3 billion shortfall in its state-run health insurer. Greece's economic minister also told German media today that he wasn't ruling out another massive debt writedown, Deutsche Welle reports. (More Greece stories.)

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