Officials from Greece`s creditors returned to Athens Thursday for their first time since the Syriza party came to power, with the radical new government denying it had allowed back the hated "troika" it had vowed to shun.
Athens -- which has been scrabbling for cash to meet its next major debt repayments -- insisted it had not been strong-armed into submission.
It claimed the technical experts were merely junior officials and not to be compared with the troika teams who it had accused of storming into ministries like colonial "invaders".
Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis described the officials as a "fact-finding mission" who would gather data to assist the main thrust of talks between Greece, the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which took place in Brussels on Wednesday.
He said the officials would not visit ministries but would remain in their hotels, and the relevant documents could be delivered to them there.
Varoufakis said the experts, who will help draw up a new economic plan for the troubled eurozone nation, will report to the new so-called Brussels Group, which it made up of the old troika plus the European Stability Mechanism.
A finance ministry source had earlier told AFP that the experts would first gather fiscal data, and that discussions on structural reforms and banks would be held next week.
This is the first time that technical teams representing Greece`s creditors have returned to Athens since the talks were suspended in December owing to elections being called.
The breakthrough came after six weeks of difficult talks -- and often ugly rhetoric -- between the EU-IMF-ECB creditors and the radical Greek government that came to power in January with the promise to tear up the country`s austerity-driven bailout.
The new government`s aggressive stance quickly alienated Greece`s creditors, who want the new government to respect the terms of the 240-billion-euro (USD 255-billion) bailout signed by its predecessors.
With many promised reforms still incomplete, and the new Greek government freezing a number of key privatisation projects, Athens has received no money from the remaining bailout funds, and the state is now desperate for cash.
This month alone, Greece must find some 6.0 billion euros to meet its debts -- including 1.5 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund. Varoufakis insisted that Greece would be able to pay.
He said the creditors and Greece "have taken measures" and would come to an agreement to address what he called "a relatively small cashflow problem."
On Wednesday, Athens raised 1.3 billion euros in a new issue of three-month treasury bills, but had to pay a higher interest rate of 2.7 percent.
Reports on Wednesday said the government was also turning to its pension and agricultural assistance funds for emergency cash to pay government salaries.
On Monday, Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem blamed Greece for wasting precious time.
"We have spent two weeks discussing who meets who, where and in what format, and it`s a complete waste of time," said Dijsselbloem, who is also Dutch finance minister.
Athens has insisted on dismantling the previous system of EU-IMF-ECB fiscal audits, conducted by a team of experts from the three institutions known as the `troika`.
The Greek government now calls the creditors `institutions`.
Athens is arguing that the austerity programme that has plunged tens of thousands of families into poverty should be relaxed, a demand opposed by Germany and other eurozone creditor nations.
In turn, Greece this week ramped up pressure on Germany to compensate victims of Nazi wartime atrocities and repay a forced war loan.
"A debt must be a debt and a debt everywhere... especially those which are weighed down by historical significance," Varoufakis said in the France24 interview.
"Unless of course, we all decide that debts can be forgiven and can be restructured," he added.
Berlin argues that the issue of reparations to Greece has already been settled in 1960 as part of an agreement with several European governments.
In a new search for allies, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Thursday will meet with OECD secretary-general Angel Gurria in Paris, followed by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker and European Parliament president Martin Schulz in Brussels on Friday.
