Greece demands IMF explanation over Wikileaks debt transcript

Greece has called for an explanation from the International Monetary Fund after an apparently leaked transcript suggested the IMF might threaten to pull out of the country's bailout as a ploy to force European lenders to offer more debt relief to the bankrupt Mediterranean nation.

EU and IMF lenders are slated to resume talks on Greece's fiscal and reform progress in Athens today, aimed at concluding a bailout review that would unlock further loans and clear the decks for negotiations on long-desired debt restructuring.

The review had been adjourned twice since January due to non-agreement among lenders over the estimated size of Greece's fiscal gap by 2018, as also disagreements with Athens on pension reforms and the management of bad loans.

According to Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras's office, Tsipras had asked IMF managing director Christine Lagarde to clarify the fund's stance, after WikiLeaks published the transcript of a 19 March conference call of three senior IMF officials.

Meanwhile, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde denied yesterday that IMF staff would push Greece closer to default as a negotiating tactic on a new Greek bailout deal, which she said was ''still a good distance away.''

She wrote in a letter to Tsipras that the debt talks needed to continue despite damage from reports of a leaked transcript suggesting that IMF staff might threaten to exit the bailout in order to force European lenders to offer more debt relief.

''Any speculation that IMF staff would consider using a credit event as a negotiating tactic is simply nonsense,'' wrote. ''My view of the ongoing negotiations is that we are still a good distance away from having a coherent program that I can present to our Executive Board,'' she said, adding that such a deal needed to put Greece on a path of robust growth and gradually restore debt sustainability.