The new Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis announced on Friday that his government was not willing to continue negotiations with the troika of international creditors. Varoufakis made this statement during a news conference following a meeting with the President of the Eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem in Athens, daily Kathimerini reports. The Finance Minister said that Greece would not extend the current bailout deadline beyond the end of February. Varoufakis also refused to negotiate with the troika, which is composed of the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He argued that the result of the early parliamentary elections had given his winning party SYRIZA a mandate to end the bailout agreement, negotiate a new deal and propose its own “deep reforms”. However Dijsselbloem said that no final decision had been taken on whether the bailout deadline should be extended in the future. The President of the Eurozone warned the new Greek government not to take any unilateral steps without consulting the troika. Dijsselbloem also dismissed the holding of a European debt conference, which had been proposed by SYRIZA. In Berlin, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble issued a similar warning against the harsh negotiating tactics used by the Greek government in order to win a debt relief.
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