Negotiations to form a Greek coalition government will start soon, prime minister George Papandreou said today, launching a new push to save the nation from bankruptcy and prevent its crisis from sweeping over Europe and beyond.
Mr Papandreou told the Greek president that the nation had to forge a political consensus to prove it wanted to keep the euro, as European leaders try to persuade the outside world that the currency bloc can overcome its huge debt problems.
"In order to create this wider co-operation, we will start the necessary procedures and contacts soon," he told reporters after meeting president Karolos Papoulias this morning.
Greek opposition leader Antonis Samaras will also meet the country's president tonight, a statement from the president's office said.
Mr Samaras, the head of the New Democracy conservatives, had earlier called for a short-term coalition government to secure parliamentary approval of a vital euro zone bailout and early elections. The meeting is scheduled for 11pm (Irish times), the statement said
Hours after surviving a parliamentary confidence vote, Mr Papandreou said Greece had to avoid early elections, calling for a broad-based government to secure a bailout from the euro zone, the main weapon in Europe's battle against the spreading economic crisis.
"My aim is to immediately create a government of co-operation," he told the president in the presence of reporters before they held talks behind closed doors.
"A lack of consensus would worry our European partners over our country's will to stay in the euro zone." Political sources involved in the negotiations said the talks are being led behind the scenes by finance minister Evangelos Venizelos, who aims to head the new coalition.
The sources said Mr Papandreou, a socialist whose father and grandfather were Greek prime ministers, would step aside to make way for Venizelos, the man he beat to his Pasok party's leadership in 2004.
Without saying when he might quit, Mr Papandreou - who has led Greece through two years of political, economic and social turmoil - said he was ready to discuss who should lead the new government which would rule until elections probably early next year.
"The last thing I care about is my post. I don't care even if I am not re-elected. The time has come to make a new effort ... I never thought of politics as a profession," he told parliament before the vote in the early hours of Saturday.
A new coalition is likely to exclude the main opposition party, the conservative New Democracy.
Mr Papandreou said the coalition should aim to ram the €130 billion bailout deal through the assembly, the last financial lifeline for a nation that is due to run out of money in December.
Under heavy domestic and international pressure, the prime minister has backed down on a proposal for a referendum on the euro zone rescue.
Greek voters could well have rejected the deal, potentially sinking euro zone leaders' attempts to stop the debt crisis devastating economies such as Italy and Spain.
Greeks, burdened by waves of spending and welfare cuts plus tax rises which have pushed the country into a long recession, expressed disgust at the political wrangling up at parliament.
The leaders of France and Germany told Mr Papandreou this week that Greece would not get a cent more of aid if Greece failed to approve the bailout, meaning that the state would run out of money in December.
Newspapers labelled Mr Papandreou's confidence victory as little more than a deal paving the way for a new government without him.
The pro-government Ta Nea ran with "New government now!" Greece has been racked by torment since soon after Papandreou won power in 2009 and revealed that the real budget deficit was three times bigger than original estimates put out by his conservative predecessor.
International investors took fright, Greece's borrowing costs soared and Papandreou was forced to go cap in hand last year to the only bodies still willing to lend at affordable rates - the European Union and IMF.
In parliament, Mr Venizelos said a new government should rule until next February and then call elections.
Reuters