Greece PM Warns of a tough deal

Brussels

 Greek premier Alexis Tsipras warned that Greece must be ready for a "difficult compromise" in its talks with creditors as his closest advisers arrived in Brussels yesterday to thrash out a last-minute deal.

 Cash-starved Greece is under huge pressure to strike an agreement to unlock vital bailout funds in the coming days, if not hours, after top eurozone officials turned the screws Friday and said they were preparing the ground for an Athens default.

 Tsipras' closest advisors bring with them Greece’s latest bid to end five months of standoff with the EU and IMF, who are demanding tough reforms in exchange for giving Athens 7.2 billion euros ($8.1 billion) still remaining in its international rescue package.

"The decisions and how we handle them belong to us completely, despite their difficulty," Tsipras said, in the clearest sign yet that major concessions by Athens may be on their way.

Whatever needs to be done "needs to be done quickly", deputy finance minister Dimitris Mardas told Skai TV in Athens, who predicted that there would be a deal.

 European sources said the delegation would sit down with top officials from the EU commission, the ECB as well as the IMF, the three institutions formerly known as the troika, which became an object of hate for many Greeks hardest hit by the crisis.

 The urgency increased exponentially on Friday when Europe's top economic officials said they had for the first time ever discussed the prospects of Athens defaulting on its debts.

 "In discussions, a default was mentioned as one of the scenarios that can happen when everything goes wrong," a eurozone official told AFP on condition of anonymity after talks in Bratislava Friday.

 The bombshell came a day after the International Monetary Fund, Greece’s most hardline creditor, pulled its technical team from Brussels because it was dissatisfied with the state of the negotiations.