Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday in Berlin. After their first bilateral meeting, they held a news conference followed by a working dinner. The two leaders insisted that their talks had been productive despite differences on a number of issues.
"I
did not come here to ask for financial aid," Tsipras said. "I came for an exchange of our thoughts and opinions, to see where there is common ground and where there is disagreement." "We want Greece to be economically strong, to have growth, to fight unemployment, especially among the young, to implement the necessary structural reforms, to create a functioning public administration etc,"
Merkel told journalists, adding that the two sides will discuss how the cooperation between Athens and Berlin will continue in the framework of the Greek-German Partnership and the Task Force.
Tsipras, also
raised the issue of World War II reparations, claiming that there is a moral duty to settle the matter. However, he stressed that the reparations and the return of a loan the Bank of Greece was forced to provide to Nazi occupiers were a completely different issue from the current bailout programme, and that the two should not be linked.
