EUROZONE : EUROPE WATCHES AS GREECE WRANGLES OVER EU-IMF BAILOUT PLAN.

Greece's political parties were due to hammer out an accord on a new EU-IMF bailout, on 8 February, after days of delays and wrangling over the terms of a deal that are essential to secure Greece a 130 billion rescue loan. EU and eurozone officials were not confirming a possible meeting of eurozone finance ministers until the talks were completed, though there is a meeting pencilled in for 9 February.

"The ball is in the Greek authorities' court," said a spokesman for Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn. "There has to be something concrete on the table," he said, referring to a voluntary deal involving private sector bondholders in a second Greek rescue, as well as the spending cuts and economic reforms needed to convince eurozone governments to put up the guarantees for the loan.

Written commitments to the austerity plan are required from the three political parties - Pasok, the Socialist party of ex-Premier George Papandreou, the Conservative New Democracy party and the rightist Laos - backing Greece's interim Premier, former ECB Vice-President Lucas Papademos. But protests have raged across Greece over the terms of the loan, which include a drop in the minimum wage, pensions and holiday bonuses in the private sector, as well as massive job cuts - up to 15,000 by the end of this year - in the public sector. MEP Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, Belgium), leader of the Liberal ALDE group in the European Parliament, said after returning from a trip to Athens that the country was "on the edge of the abyss" and that political...