Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to his party's lawmakers on Friday to back a tough reforms package after abruptly offering last-minute concessions to try to save the country from financial meltdown.
After walking into a party meeting to applause, Tsipras rallied his Syriza lawmakers to throw their weight behind the new proposals ahead of a snap vote in parliament on the negotiations, urging them to help keep Greece in the euro.
It is unclear whether all the creditors would back the latest reforms package, which was strikingly similar to the terms Greece had rejected in a referendum Tsipras had called in June. Germany sounded wary, with a finance ministry spokesman ruling out any debt reduction that would lower its real value.
But France, Greece's strongest supporter in the euro-zone, rushed to offer praise with President Francois Hollande calling the offer "serious and credible". Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem called it a "thorough piece of text" but declined to go into specifics.
The lenders' backing is crucial for euro zone leaders to support the proposals. Dijsselbloem, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde were due to make a first assessment of the plans by teleconference at 1100 GMT (7:00 a.m. EDT), EU sources said.
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