Cyprus says Eurogroup should have extended Greece's financial assistance program

Cyprus said on Monday that eurozone countries should have extended Greece's financial assistance program.

"Cyprus' position is that there should have been an extension of the Greek program... but the issue was not even considered by the Eurogroup meeting on Saturday," Finance Minister Harris Georgiades told the state radio on Monday.

Georgiades, who participated in Saturday's extraordinary meeting in Brussels on a reforms-for-cash deal for Greek, also said he disagreed with an option of harsh austerity measures and tax hikes as advocated by the Eurogroup's negotiators.

"This is a recipe leading to a vicious circle of deficit and recession," he said.

Georgiades said at the Eurogroup meeting he had a clear position on relieving Greece's debt burden despite the fact that Cyprus had already paid a high price in the previous write down of the Greek debt.

He added that at the time Cyprus lost about 4.5 billion euros (5.01 billion U.S. dollars), the equivalent of 25 percent of the eastern Mediterranean island's annual economy, as a result of the depreciation of Greek sovereign bonds by almost 75 percent.

This loss by the island's banks and the inability of the state to recapitalize its lenders forced Cyprus into requesting a 10-billion-euro bailout from the Eurogroup and the International Monetary Fund, which also involved the resolution of the banking system.

"We stood ready to accept any arrangement which would further ease the Greek debt," said Georgiades, who was criticized by opposition parties for allegedly failing to support Greece during the Eurogroup discussions.

Georgiades said that in spite of Greece's current crisis, the Cypriot economy was not in danger of any considerable fallout, as its economy was now quite separate from that of Greece and on a course to recovery. Endit