AP reports over the weekend: "Greece's ruling Syriza party narrowly rejects call to stop paying IMF debt, nationalize banks"

  • A call by hardliners within Greece's ruling Radical Left Coalition (Syriza) party to not pay the next installment to the International Monetary Fund and to nationalize the country's banks has been narrowly defeated
  • Syriza's central committee rejected the proposal by the party's Left Platform on a vote of 95-75 and one blank vote
  • Thirty other members of the 201-member central committee had already left for their hometowns
  • Left Platform leader Panayiotis Lafazanis had declared that "it would not be a catastrophe to exit the euro (nor) a terrorist act not to pay the next installment to the IMF"
  • Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis, a senior Syriza member, said in a TV interview Sunday that Greece can't pay the IMF installments, a total of 1.6 billion euros, in June.