Greece second bailout talks stretch further as crucial issues unresolved

"Crucial" issues remain to be resolved in Greece's critical negotiations over a second multibillion euro international bailout, and talks would continue into the weekend, the country's finance minister said on Saturday.

A long anticipated bond swap deal was now the easier part of the process in securing continued funding for the country, Evangelos Venizelos said after marathon talks with debt inspectors from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, known as the troika.

Venizelos said he would speak on Saturday afternoon by teleconference with the other eurozone finance ministers, and that the ministers would meet on Wednesday - a gathering that had originally been expected to be held on Monday.

"After 12 hours of continuous and tough negotiations with the troika on the new program, we have solved quite a few issues. But there remain crucial issues which concern the future of the country and the Greek people," Venizelos said.

Greece desperately needs to secure the second bailout and the bond swap deal that seeks to halve its debt load in order to avoid a catastrophic default within weeks.

A major sticking point in the negotiations over Greece's second euro 130 billion bailout are disagreements over the troika's demands for private sector wage cuts.

Apart from the new bailout talks, Greece is conducting urgent negotiations with its private creditors, who are being asked to lose half the face value of their Greek government bonds. New talks on the writedown - which would slash Greece's national debt by euro 100 billion ($131.6 billion) - will be held in Athens over the weekend.

Venizelos said the negotiations on the bond swap "is now the easier part of the whole procedure".

In a letter to the government on Friday, Greek unions and employers said they rejected proposals to slash the minimum wage and further cut annual salaries. Private sector workers have already suffered a 14 per cent loss in income due to emergency taxes imposed since the beginning of 2010, the letter said.

The creditors argue that cutting labour costs is essential to making the Greek economy more competitive. The unions and employers' associations counter that the move will only further depress consumer spending and therefore tax revenue.

The government must conclude negotiations on its second rescue package "that will ensure debt sustainability of the country in the long run, and that will bring remedies to a number of serious problems that the Greek economy has had even before this crisis," said Amadeu Altafaj Tardio, spokesman for EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn.

"And one of the main problems of the Greek economy as we have said time and again here is the chronic loss of competitiveness over the past decade. ... Therefore all the elements, including elements linked to the labour market, wage formation, are part of these discussions."

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees De Jager said he and his colleagues from the other three AAA-rated eurozone countries - Germany, Luxembourg and Finland - "are not satisfied with Greece's progress."

"We want a serious commitment from the Greek government and the opposition. They need to show concrete action as soon as possible," De Jager wrote on his blog after a meeting of finance ministers from the four triple-A countries in Berlin.

"The IMF rightly is demanding a reduction in the minimum wage and a major reduction in the number of civil servants," he said. "We will not agree to the second loan package until Greece has shown it is seriously working at this."

Without the new bailout deal, and the related bond swap to cut its privately-held debt, Greece would go bankrupt in late March, when it faces a euro 14.5 billion bond redemption it cannot afford.