1st LD Writethru: Eurozone finance ministers seek Greek bailout deal as creditors at impasse

Finance ministers of the 19-country eurozone met on Tuesday to seek a deal on the Greek bailout which would unlock a new tranche of funds, while the country's creditors remained at an impasse on Greek debt sustainability.

The ministers' meeting came two days after Greek legislators approved fresh austerity measures including tax hikes and a new privatization fund, in a move to meet creditors' demands and conclude the first review of its bailout program.

"Today we are going to hear from the institutions whether all the reforms have been implemented in the right way," said Eurogroup President Jeroen Dijsselbloem at his arrival for the meeting.

Greece is again faced with tough times as it desperately needs the next tranche of a bailout distribution to repay billions of euros in loans to the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in June and July.

The IMF insists that Greece needs "upfront" and "unconditional" debt relief, saying in an assessment on Monday that Greece cannot meet the terms of the bailout program and that interest payments on the soaring national debt would eat up 60 percent of the budget by 2060 without debt forgiveness.

The Washington-based fund analyzed that Greece needed longer time to repay loans, with the interest rate on its loans fixed at 1.5 percent, and its creditors should make debt relief automatic once the bailout program ends in 2018.

The European side, however, holds the view that Athens has done enough to be given the next distribution. Germany believes Greece could meet its austerity targets and stands strongly against any debt relief for Athens.

"We still have to discuss with the IMF," Germany Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble said. In the meantime, the minister stood confident and optimistic ahead of the meeting. "I am positive that we will find an agreement," he told reporters.

Ministers agreed that Athens has made a lot of efforts in a bid to successfully complete the creditors' first review.

Dijsselbloem said the Greek government "has done a lot of work" since the summer and in the last couple of weeks, pushing forward reforms, difficult measures and getting them though parliament.

"I hope that there is a full agreement between the institutions and that we can move on in the program," he told reporters.

Greece has reduced the retirement pensions, raised income tax, value-added tax, and created a contingence mechanism, which means that if there are any deviations of public deficit, certain measures will kick in, said Spanish Finance Minister Luis De Guindos.

"There is a consensus on this among the institutions, so I think there will be closure today," he told reporters.

Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir, however, voiced concern about the uneasy talks ahead. "I am afraid that we are going to spend the whole night," he said, adding that many things remained "open" and "unresolved."

"We should focus on disbursement, on agreement about the tranche and also we would like to conclude the review... this is essentially for us," he said.

Athens is awaiting creditors' nod to the first review on its third bailout program which would unlock a new tranche of distribution worth up to 11 billion euros(12.26 billion U.S. dollars).

Finance ministers of the single currency bloc met two weeks ago but only decided to make a final conclusion on Tuesday. Greece was then urged to take more austerity measures as concerns were raised on the country's debt sustainability.

Last year, international creditors agreed to give Greece an 86-billion-euro bailout loan to avert its exit from the single currency bloc. Endit