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Anastasia Balezdrova

The record-long meeting between the leaders of Greek political parties supporting the government with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos has turned into a thriller. Seven hours and forty minutes after its beginning, LAOS leader George Karatzaferis left the Prime Minister's residence and after reciting a verse by the poet Constantine Cavafi, headed to the party headquarters on Kalirois street.

There he said that he had already stated at 6 pm that it was impossible for him to decide "within five minutes about things that will affect the life of the country for the coming years." George Karatzaferis confirmed the information announced earlier that at the meeting, he had requested written assurances from the Chamber of Accounts and the State Legal Counsel that the proposed measures are legitimate and from the Governor of the Bank of Greece George Provopoulos – to confirm in writing that no additional measures would be necessary.

At the same time, Antonis Samaras arrived at the offices of New Democracy, where a meeting of the Political Council is likely to take place. Party officials said that the leaders have not split and that the only obstacle is the reduction of auxiliary pensions.

The information was confirmed by the office of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos. "Agreement on all points of the programme except one. Discussions with the Troika continue," reads the post by the Greek Prime Minister's office on the social network Twitter.

Antonis Samaras has requested a ceiling for auxiliary pensions, i.e. for only those exceeding the amount of 300 euro to be reduced. According to the Minister of Employment, however, this will place the issue of cutting the basic pension, which is unacceptable for PASOK.

Currently, Lucas Papademos, Minister of Finance Evangelos Venizelos and Minister of Employment George Koutroumanis are meeting the representatives of the supervisory Troika, who arrived at the Maximou Residence minutes after George Karatzaferis and Antonis Samaras had left. The meeting aims at finding a way to save 300 million euro, which were intended to be provided by reducing the auxiliary pensions.

According to journalistic sources, the meeting was interrupted several times. Lucas Papademos had spoken by telephone with European Union Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, the President of the eurozone, Jean-Claude Juncker and the Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde in order to mitigate the austerity measures of the new memorandum.

Minutes before, Antonis Samaras said, "apparently some are not used to negotiating. In this difficult time, my job is to negotiate to ease the pain of people as much as possible. I do not care at all that some will try to interpret my actions differently. Negotiations are going on. There is only one issue to be resolved." In response to a journalist's question, he explained that he had meant all pensions, not just the auxiliary one.

Sources of New Democracy and the Prime Minister's office do not exclude the possibility of holding another meeting of political leaders in the coming hours.

To be continued.