GREEK Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Saturday that he sought no rift with Europe after his cash-strapped country submitted a list of reforms to its lenders in a bid to secure much-needed funds.

    Tsipras’s leftist government agreed an extension to its 240-million-euro (US$312) bailout funding in February, albeit with aid frozen, and now must agree on a set of reforms which it sent to its EU-IMF creditors Friday in order to stave off bankruptcy.

    The austerity-weary nation will run out of money by April 20, a source familiar with the matter said Tuesday, if it does not unlock much-needed funding.

    “The liquidity problem is naturally hampering the situation but I believe that will be tackled immediately once we reach an agreement over reforms,” Tsipras said in an interview with yesterday’s Real News newspaper.

    After answering a question regarding government attempts to deal with corruption, Tsipras was asked whether he wanted a rift or a solution with Greece’s European partners.

    “My view has always been the same: a break from corruption, a solution with Europe,” he replied.

    Earlier Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis, one of Tsipras’s most left-wing ministers, hit out at a “Germanized European Union ... for tightening week-by-week the noose around the Greek economy.”

    Athens says its reforms will boost state revenues by 3 billion euros in 2015, partly by tackling tax evasion, but that it will oppose any new “recessionary measures” such as further wage or pension cuts.

    Discussions with EU and IMF lenders, known as the Brussels Group, will continue throughout the weekend with “much work to be done,” sources told the semi-official Athens News Agency.

    As talks unfold, Finance Minister Varoufakis told Vima newspaper yesterday that the reforms would not include a rise in VAT. (SD-Agencies)