You're reading: Greek government still split on new cuts

ATHENS, Greece — Greece's Socialist party remains at odds with its conservative coalition partners over a proposed round of new austerity cuts needed for country to remain in an emergency loan program, a senior party official said Wednesday.

Socialist official Panos Beglitis made
the remarks, hours before leaders of three parties in the coalition are
to hold a third meeting in a week to try and hammer out a €11.5 billion
($14.1 billion) package of cuts for 2013-14, demanded by emergency
creditors.

The cuts will “will not work” without major changes,
Beglitis said, acknowledging that parties in the country’s new coalition
government are at odds over how to rescue troubled Greek public
finances.

He insisted that Greece needs a two-year extension in its austerity program to make it workable.

Prime
Minister Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ conservatives formed a
coalition with rival Socialists and the small Democratic Left party
after June 17 general elections.

Greece has been relying on rescue
loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund
since high interest rates pushed it out of bond markets in 2010.

Debt
monitors from the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank
and European Union — known as the troika — are currently in Greece for
an inspection, and are pressing the new government to make up for past
delays in long-term structural reforms aimed at reducing the size of the
public sector.

Beglitis said the Socialists want to split the
cuts and reforms into two stages and over a longer time period, to avoid
pushing the country into deeper recession.

“Participation in a
coalition government does not mean the unquestioning acceptance of
everything,” he told state-run NET television.

“This (austerity)
program will not work under this current rationale and tactics. We are
at an impasse and we must realize this.”

Beglitis blamed what he
described as Germany’s “one-sided” insistence in economic austerity on
the worsening borrowing crisis among struggling eurozone members like
Spain and Italy.

And he said the government needed to negotiate a proposed extension with EU leaders instead of the troika officials.

Samaras
is to meet with the Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos and Democratic
Left leader Fotis Kouvelis at 5:00 p.m. (1400GMT).