Greece accepts harsh new bailout terms, vows swift vote

1A man walks past a modern bronze statue of Alexander the Great on his famous horse Bucephalus in the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015.
2Greece has agreed on the broad terms of a new three-year bailout package with international creditors, with only a few details left to iron out, the finance minister said Tuesday.
3A man reads a newspaper outside a shop in in the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015.
4In this Friday, July 31, 2015 file photo, Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos arrives for a meeting with senior negotiators at a hotel in Athens.
5Greece has essentially concluded its bailout talks with its creditors, with just a few details remaining for the deal to be formally clinched, Greek officials said Tuesday, Aug. 11.
6Greece's Economy Minister Giorgos Stathakis, left, arrives at a hotel to continue talks with bailout negotiators, in central Athens, on Monday, Aug. 10, 2015.
7Athens and the negotiators are hoping to conclude talks Tuesday for a third bailout package.
8A man works at his coffee shop in the main meat market of the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015.
9Greece's Economy Minister Giorgos Stathakis arrives at a hotel to continue talks with bailout negotiators, in central Athens, Monday, Aug. 10, 2015.
10A man reads a newspaper outside a shop in the main meat market of the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015.
11A street musician walks with his accordion in the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015.
12A fisherman sits at the seaside of the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015.
13ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Greece agreed to harsh terms for a new three-year bailout Tuesday and vowed to push it through parliament this week, despite mounting dissent in the ruling left-wing party.
14With the country facing the risk of a debt default next week, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had sought to speed up the talks and get approval of a deal this week.
15After Greece and its creditors reached an accord on the main points on Tuesday, Tsipras called for an emergency session of parliament for a vote late Thursday.
16Greece needs to start tapping the new bailout - worth 85 billion euros ($93 billion) - so that it can make a key debt repayment next week and secure its future in the euro.
17The draft agreement forces Tsipras to accept what he had vowed to resist only months ago: the sale of some state property and deep cuts to pensions, military spending and ending tax credits to people considered vulnerable.
18Officials in Athens and the European Union said a few issues were left to be ironed out Tuesday.
19"We are very close. Two or three very small details remain," Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said as he emerged Tuesday morning from all-night discussions with creditors.
20The European Commission, a key negotiator in the talks, confirmed the progress.
21Annika Breidthardt, the Commission's spokeswoman for economic affairs, said the details were expected to be cleared up later in the day.
22Dissenters in Tsipras' left-wing Syriza party, who want to end bailout talks and return to a national currency, promised to fight the deal, describing it as a "noose around the neck of the Greek people."
23Tsipras requested an end to the summer recess to allow for the two-day approval procedure and to get a vote before a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Friday.
24The agreement still requires approval from higher-level representatives, and senior finance officials from the 28 EU nations were holding a conference call Tuesday.
25Germany, the largest single contributor to Greece's two previous bailouts and among the toughest negotiators so far, remained cautious on the timing for a final deal.
26"We will have to examine the results that come in the course of today," deputy finance minister Jens Spahn told n-tv television.
27Investors cheered the news of progress.
28Greece's government borrowing rates fell, a sign investors are less worried about a default.
29The 2-year bond yield dropped by 4.2 percentage points to 14.73 percent.
30The Athens Stock Exchange, which reopened recently after being shut for five weeks during the most severe part of Greece's financial crisis closed up 2.1 percent.
31Cash-strapped Greece needs more money by Aug. 20 at the latest, when it has a debt repayment of just over 3 billion euros to make to the European Central Bank.
32The government insisted it has also gained key concessions from lenders: greater control over labor reforms, avoiding a "fire sale" of state assets, and softer deficit targets.
33It said it had agreed to have a 0.25 percent government deficit this year and a 0.5 percent surplus next year, when not counting the cost of servicing debt.
34Those so-called primary surpluses would rise to 1.75 percent in 2017 and 3.5 percent in 2018.
35The surpluses are more ambitious than those of many European countries - Spain, for example, is not expected to achieve a primary surplus before 2018.
36That's largely because the creditors want to make sure Greece is able to start paying off its debt load as soon as possible.
37The government claims the creditors wanted even more ambitious surplus targets, and that the targets it agreed to mean it has will be able to spare the country budget cuts worth about 20 billion euros.
38"This practically means that with the current agreement there will be no fiscal burden - in other words new measures - in the immediate future," the government said in a note.
39Banks will be strengthened with new cash infusions by the end of the year and will have an immediate boost of "at least 10 billion euros," it said.
40The government insists this means there is no longer any danger that the banks may have to raid bank deposits to restore their financial health.
41The government also said that banks will not make repossessions and auctions of primary residences will not occur within 2015.
42Greece has relied on bailouts worth a total 240 billion euros ($263 billion) from eurozone members states and the International Monetary Fund since concern over its high debts locked it out of bond markets in 2010.
43To secure the loans, successive governments have had to implement spending cuts, tax hikes and reforms.
44While the austerity has reduced budget overspending, the measures compounded a deep recession and pushed unemployment to a record high.
45Figures next week are expected to confirm that Greece's recession deepened in the second quarter.
46Though the government was elected on a staunchly anti-austerity platform in January, it has been forced into a policy U-turn after bailout talks came close to collapse last month.
47While Greece's parliament ratified further tax hikes and reforms, the rebellion by hardline Syriza lawmakers has left Tsipras' party with only a nominal parliamentary majority.
48That has stoked speculation that Tsipras will call early elections after the bailout deal is signed.