Tsipras says accepts partners’ demand for IMF role in bailout

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Thursday that Athens accepts its European partners' insistence that the International Monetary Fund should play a role in supervising the country's international bailout.

Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos on a panel that included German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, Tsipras said Greece believed the European Union could manage the program on its own but it accepted that other partners wanted the IMF involved.

“There has been a long debate, we have heard different views. Some partners asked that the IMF be involved and we agreed in order to have the agreement. Now we are doing all we can to implement this agreement,” he said.

Schaeuble said the German and other parliaments had agreed to aid Greece on condition that the IMF remained engaged in the program and it would be like “entering a room full of dynamite with a lighted candle” to ask the Bundestag to change that agreement. 

[Reuters]