Internationalist Workers' Left

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on March 23 for talks expected to focus on Greece?s looming cash crunch even as bilateral tensions remain high.

Tsipras is expected to use the meeting, proposed by Merkel on Monday, to seek a political solution to the current deadlock that would allow the release of much-needed funding.

By Xenia Kounalaki

Greece's maverick Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said on Sunday he regretted a celebrity shoot for Paris Match that drew widespread ridicule on social media.

"I wish that shoot had not taken place, I regret it," he told Alpha TV, adding that he did "not agree with the aesthetic" of the pictures.

By Alexis Papachelas

Where is the government going with its approach? Is it heading for a rift with Berlin and the other creditors or kicking up dust before it achieves a compromise? Why has it dramatically reopened, even with the involvement of the prime minister, the issue of World War II reparations? Four scenarios present themselves and hold the possible answer:

By Vangelis Mandravelis

The government is closing down Attica Coastline SA while the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (TAIPED) will be bolstered by the absorption of State Property Company SA (ETAD), according to the government?s first draft law aimed at restarting the Greek economy, which was put up for public consultation on Thursday.

Defense Minister and junior coalition partner leader Panos Kammenos declared Thursday that Greece?s ties with Israel remain strong following talks with a visiting delegation from the American Jewish Committee.

Greece's creditors returned to Athens on March 12 for the first time since the hard-left Syriza party came to power, with the radical new government denying it had allowed back the hated  "troika" it had vowed to shun.
      
Athens -- which has been scrabbling for cash to meet its next major debt repayments -- insisted it had not been strong-armed into submission.
      

Amid a barrage of biased articles from the international press- especially the German - on the Greek government's efforts to secure a better deal with its creditors and end the austerity policies that have brought the country to its knees, some newspapers and magazines follow a different, more objective approach.

Greece?s opposition parties have called on SYRIZA and its Attica Governor Rena Dourou to publicly condemn a leftist councillor after she launched a verbal assault on a journalist via Twitter.

A large majority of Greeks want Athens to reach a compromise deal with international lenders to avoid having to leave the euro zone, according to a survey published on Monday.