The Hague: A bailout offer to be put to Athens at a crucial meeting in Brussels to help Greece avoid possibly defaulting is "not a negotiation", Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said on Wednesday.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is due in Brussels for the meeting with European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, with both sides to put fresh proposals on the table.
"There is no negotiating," Rutte told journalists on the sidelines of an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development meeting in Paris, according to his spokesman.
"What we have to do is to make clear to Alexis Tsipras and his new government that we respect that there is a new government but they have to respect that Greece as a country has made certain agreements with the European Union and they have to live up to those agreements," Rutte told
There are increasing concerns that Athens does not have the money to make a 300 million euro ($334 million) repayment to the IMF by the end of the week.
Rutte said that he knew some of the details of the bailout proposal, but "discussing them in public would not help the process."
A Greek exit from the eurozone remained a possibility, Rutte said.
"I don`t want it. Nobody wants it. You can never say that it is not an option but it is not the aim," Rutte said.
Tsipras is to outline to Juncker his government`s new 46-page proposal it hopes will serve as the basis for a compromise to unlock 7.2 billion euros in bailout loans.
Tsipras has promised to implement a series of privatisations that he had previously opposed, and to reform the value-added tax system as well as the pension system.
