GREECE’S new government will demonstrate its reliability and proceed with the structural changes needed but hopes to push for a better bailout agreement when it resumes talks with international lenders — including asking for a Spain-style deal for its banks, the country’s development minister said yesterday.

Speaking at a conference in the Greek capital Athens, Costis Hatzidakis said that Greece can ask its European peers to review the aid given in the country’s banking system under new terms, based on recent decisions taken at last week’s European Union summit.

“This is something that will automatically reduce our debt by several billion,” he said. “If we are reliable, [the international creditors] will show their solidarity,” he added.

Greece is keen to exploit a new bank-recapitalization plan agreed at last week’s summit that would allow euro zone member states to pass on the costs of shoring up local banks to Europe’s soon-to-be launched bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism.

The deal is expected to favor Spain, which has asked for up to 100 billion euros (US$126 billion) in aid for its ailing banks but hopes to avoid boosting its government-debt burden.

In Greece’s case, that would mean reducing the total stock of debt — now more than 330 billion euros — by as much as 50 billion euros, which has been earmarked for the country’s lenders as part of an earlier debt-restructuring deal.

Hatzidakis’ remarks come just two days before the heads of a delegation of international inspectors from the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank — known as the troika — will begin a three-day visit to Athens to assess Greece’s progress in implementing its latest 173-billion-euro bailout program.

Hatzidakis also said that the political situation, and especially the political stability of the country, is critical. “We need a new political and social climate, in which Greece could make a pleasant surprise,” he said.

Greece’s three-party-coalition government is likely to receive a vote of confidence in parliament this weekend.

(SD-Agencies)