NICOSIA, Sept 14: The eurozone now accepts Greece will need more time to meet economic targets under its delayed bailout, but ministers maintained on Friday that there will be no “third aid programme” for the debt-wracked country.

Amid international tensions over the perennial struggle in Athens to meet conditions for hundreds of billions of euros of loans, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde joined talks in Cyprus to update on the latest findings from “troika” inspectors on the ground.

No formal decisions or agreements were due, and there was even less expectation of any breakthrough in the stalemate over Spanish banking and sovereign debt or Irish hopes of winning help for its banks on the back of Madrid’s deal. However, the change of tone on Greece in Nicosia was significant, as the “troika” of international lenders — the EU, IMF and the ECB — ploughs on towards a summit of the EU leaders on October 18-19 that is clearly shaping up as the next Greek crunch moment.

A group of key Eurogroup finance ministers have now converged around a growing consensus to give Athens “more time” to deliver on its end of the second, 130-billion-euro bailout originally agreed in March, but “not extra money.” “If the deficit turns out to be somewhat worse than expected because of a temporary downturn in the economy, there could be some more time — but not money, not extra money,” said Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees De Jager.

“There could be no time for delaying measures because it’s in the interests of Greece and the people of Greece that reform measures will continue,” he underlined. Austria’s Maria Fekter adopted the same line, saying “we will give them the time they need for that but probably not more money,” the day after France’s Pierre Moscovici offered the possibility of some flexibility following a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in Athens.—AFP