In the wake of the wikileaks documents that revealed the IMF was planning to push Greece to the brink of a credit event in order to force the country to cave in to harsher than agreed austerity measures, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras said he would not allow the Fund to tear Europe apart. Speaking to Sunday edition of newspaper ‘Ethnos tis Kyriakis’, Tsipras underlined that he would not let Paul Thomsen, the chief IMF negotiator in Europe whose talk with head of the IMF team in Greece Delia Velculescu was leaked by the whistleblower site, destroy the cohesion of Europe. Tsipras said he would try to form a common European front against the ‘dangerous tactics’ used by the IMF for the future of Europe’s unity. He added that the IMF officials’ statements that saw the light could cause a wider geopolitical destabilisation in the region. Tsipras plans to take three-pronged approach on the matter by exposing the IMF’s motives by arguing it sought to bankrupt an EU member-state; associate the Greek crisis with the British EU referendum, and thus risking a general destabilisation of the whole EU; and finally, threatening German Chancellor Angela Merkel and compelling her to line up with the IMF’s positions. Tsipras sent as letter to IMF Director Christine Lagarde demanding for explanation on the true intentions of the Fund in the negotiations, while he made it clear that the trust towards the IMF has been seriously damaged.
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