Athens old guard in final coalition push

The leader of Greece’s main socialist party has met his conservative counterpart in an attempt to form a unity government.

Evangelos Venizelos of Pasok is the third party leader to try to form a coalition since Sunday’s election produced a hung parliament. He has held talks with Antonis Samaras of conservative party New Democracy.

A failure to agree a deal could see Greece hold fresh elections next month which could put the country’s membership of the euro at risk. New Democracy won the most votes in Sunday’s election and Pasok, which has been accused of mishandling the financial crisis, came third — its worst electoral showing in nearly 40 years.

The two parties formed the outgoing coalition but lost their majority in

parliament.

Mr Venizelos has also met Fotis Kouvelis, leader of the smaller Democratic Left party, and said they had made progress towards a new coalition.

If New Democracy accept their plan, the three parties would have enough seats to form a government.

Alexis Tsipras, the head of the Left-wing coalition Syriza — which came second in the election — failed to form a government because of his insistence on rejecting austerity measures demanded by the EU and IMF.

Greece is dependent on funds from international bailout loans to continue functioning and voters have been left disaffected by the cuts agreed to meet its massive repayments.

Mr Tsipras has said a Greek euro exit would damage both his country and Europe as a whole.