BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday rejected the prospect of debt relief for Athens, adding to tensions between the radical new Greek government and its international creditors. "There has already been voluntary debt forgiveness by private creditors, banks have already slashed billions from Greece's debt," Merkel said in an interview with the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper published Saturday. "I do not envisage fresh debt cancellation," she said. The new Greek government has already begun to roll back years of austerity measures demanded by the EU and the International Monetary Fund in return for a 240 billion euro ($269 billion) bailout granted to avoid a financial meltdown in 2010, and says it will negotiate to halve the debt. At the start of 2012, Greece restructured its debt in a deal involving private creditors who took "haircuts" or wrote down parts of their holdings. This cut Greece's total debt burden by around 100 billion euros. But the country is today still lumbered with a debt pile of more than 315 billion euros, upwards of 175 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a record for the European Union. "Europe will continue to show its solidarity with Greece, as with other countries hard hit by the crisis if these countries carry out reforms and cost-saving measures," Merkel said. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will visit Italy and France on Tuesday and Wednesday, but has no immediate plans to visit Germany, Europe's biggest economy and effective paymaster. Greece's new government dramatically escalated its battle with the country's international creditors Friday, saying it would no longer meet with EU and IMF auditors and rejecting fresh loans offered for February. Athens had been promised another 7.2 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in funds from the European Union, the IMF and the European Central Bank if it completed reforms required by its lenders by February 28. But despite warnings Greece would shortly run out of money, hardline Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said his government preferred to do without the new round of funds and instead renegotiate the entire bailout package. "This government was elected on the basis of analytically questioning the very logic of the program now being applied," he said, referring to the reforms and budget cuts demanded by Athens' international creditors. "Our first act as government will not be to reject the logic of questioning this program by requesting to extend it," he told a press conference. — Agencies
