SYRIZA chief open to Samaras meeting, Venizelos ‘unnecessary’

Greece’s leftist opposition on Wednesday said that SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras would accept an invitation to meet with conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, ruling out however any consensus on matters related to the Greek debt.

“If the prime minster feels the need to invite Mr Tsipras is something that we will see. However, we make clear from the start that there is no room for a consensus on issues related to debt,” SYRIZA’s spokesman Panos Skourletis said Wednesday.

“Things are clear. If the meeting is designed as a bid to find accomplices, then there is no point to it. If it is seen as an intermediate step ahead of a meeting among political party leaders, then it could produce some positive results,” he said.

The SYRIZA spokesman said that a meeting would not involve Samaras’s coalition partner Evangelos Venizelos.

“We think that [the presence of] Venizelos would be unnecessary… If the government cannot communicate or express itself with a single voice, that is its own problem,” Skourletis said.