By Magda Panoutsopoulou
ANKARA
Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos has announced a hard line on the bailout talks – one that could eventually split the ruling Greek coalition.
Kammenos, who leads the Independent Greeks (ANEL) party which is a member of the ruling coalition, has warned that his party will not sit still if the government agrees to a bailout solution that is too much like what the previous government had accepted.
“We will not sit still with our hands folded, Kammenos said in an interview on the private TV channel Star on Thursday.
Kammenos said that a ‘Grexit’ is not to be excluded.
“In that case, we will reach agreements with anyone we can, for example, with the United States, Russia, China, India or the Middle East countries,” he said.
“We do not want a ‘Grexit,’ Kammenos said, “but we will defend the sovereignty of the Greek people. “They are wrong if they think that this government will kneel and will go to elections."
What Kammenos refuses to accept is another ‘memorandum,’ that is a bailout agreement that would be close to the one made by the previous government and which imposed strict austerity conditions.
This is a challenge to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who is negotiating with Greece’s European creditors. The creditors want more cuts in government spending, and Tsipras may have to give in as the country lurches toward insolvency.
Greece is nearly out of funds to run its banks and public services, and, nonetheless, must make about $2.5 billion in payments to the International Monetary Fund in June.
As Tsipras gets closer to an agreement with the Eurogroup in Brussels, Kammenos in Athens gets more and more angry.
"Under no circumstances will the Independent Greeks accept another ‘memorandum,’” Kammenos said in the interview. “This government, that has received a popular mandate to stop memoranda and the people's humiliation, is not going to sign a memorandum.”
The nationalist anti bailout leader of the Independent Greeks party, Kammenos served as a deputy minister of Marine Affairs from 2007 to 2009 while a member of the centrist New Democracy party.
Kammenos was kicked out of New Democracy in 2012 when the government accepted further tax hikes and cuts in spending from the institutional creditors – the EU, the IMF, and the European Central Bank -- and Kammenos voted against the agreement.
So Kammenos has a long record of standing up to Greece’s European creditors.
“If the creditors try to hurt Greece, the Greek government will suspend the treaty ‘Dublin II’ and send migrants found in Greek territory into Europe, straight to Berlin,” he threatened.
Tsipras will not find him an easy partner to convince should he present an eventual agreement with the Eurogroup to parliament. Kammenos could split the ruling coalition if he feels the agreement is just another 'memorandum' in disguise.
