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Greece faces no liquidity issues: PM

Xinhua, March 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

Greece does not face any liquidity issues, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reassured on Sunday following a new meeting of the government's financial team amidst media reports that the debt-laden country could collapse within weeks without immediate international aid.

"There is no such problem," Tsipras said, according to local media in the light of reports that the technical team of international lenders which has started checks on Greece's fiscal data since last week discovered a 2-billion-euro (about 2.10 billion U.S. dollars) financing gap.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis also reassured during an interview with a Greek television channel on Sunday that there was "no problem with the payment of salaries and pensions."

He stressed that the Left-led government which was elected in January this year would not implement new austerity measures.

Varoufakis also said he regretted a recent celebrity-style photo shoot for a French magazine at his home under the Acropolis hill with his wife which caused reactions even within the ruling Radical Left SYRIZA party.

"I wish that shoot had not taken place, I regret it ... I do not like the aesthetic of these pictures," he said, as prominent SYRIZA members publicly commented that he should put an end to such publicity and focus on work.

Varoufakis' negotiating style has sparked a major discussion in Greece and abroad. Amidst scenarios that Berlin pressured Athens for his replacement German tabloid newspaper Bild wrote this week that the Greek minister would soon be dismissed.

"Some people turn their wishful thinking into news stories," Greek government sources commented.

Despite the difficulties in negotiations with lenders over collaboration after the four-year bailout which expired this February and scenarios of cash crunch by April, six out of 10 Greeks still support the government, according to a new opinion survey.

About 51 percent of respondents in the poll conducted by polling firm Public Issue for "Avgi" (Dawn) newspaper approved of the Feb. 20 euro group deal which bridges the old bailout with a final agreement on the resolution of the Greek debt crisis due in June.

Approximately 20 percent of respondents believed the country probably gained something from the euro group agreement, while 23 percent said Greece did not gain anything.

Finally about 53 percent of Greeks expected that despite obstacles SYRIZA "can succeed the country's economic recovery". Endit