NEWS

Tsipras urges PM to stop negotiating with troika and head south

Greece needs a national negotiating strategy and a policy focusing on geopolitical changes in the area, said SYRIZA and main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras.

In an interview with Kathimerini’s editor-in-chief Alexis Papachelas on Skai channel’s New Files program on Tuesday evening, Tsipras called on Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to stop negotiations with the troika – as representantives of the European Union, the European Central Banks and the International Monetary Fund are collectively known – and begin visiting his counterparts in southern Europe “tomorrow morning.”

The SYRIZA chief argued that in the last three years Germany has led the eurozone to a “death race”, adding that the German blackmail could backfire given that an eurozone collapse was not in Germany’s best interest. He admitted, however, that such a strategy posed a risk for Greece’s continued eurozone membership.

Tsipras said that Germany “has already prepared a renegotiating plan” in the case of SYRIZA winning the next round of general elections. He added that such a plan included certain concessions which the Germans might be willing to make in order to reach a deal.

“SYRIZA has no plans to break down the eurozone and the European Union, nor to take Greece out of the EU. Our plan is to save Greece within the EU, not the opposite,” he said.

Tsipras did not discard the possibility of seeking the support of socialist PASOK and Democratic Left if SYRIZA was called to form a government. “Never say never,” he said, while also clearyl stating that a SYRIZA administration would not “govern based on a Memorandum plan.”

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