Who’s afraid of the IMF? Greece is betting that the major European Union powers just might be.
The heavily indebted Balkan country, facing German and French reluctance to pony up and help bail it out as a fellow euro user, has declared it may turn to the Washington-based international lending agency.
But an unprecedented IMF bailout of a eurozone member country would signal that the European currency union can’t handle its own troubles — and some are now calling for the creation of a European monetary fund instead.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who travels to Berlin on Friday to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel before heading to Paris to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy Sunday, has warned that if the new austerity measures it adopted this week fail to impress his counterparts in the euro zone, Greece will turn to the IMF for help.
“From today the problem can’t be considered ‘Greek’. We are doing what we must and more,” Papandreou said. “So now, it is the time of Europe.”
If the EU and the markets don’t respond “as we would wish, because of speculative behavior, our last resort would be the International Monetary Fund.” (AP)
