Greek PM confident debt talks will be clinched in time

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos promised a debt swap would be clinched in time and dispatched senior officials to Washington on Monday to break a deadlock in talks that has prompted new fears of a disorderly default.

Athens needs a deal with the private sector, the EU and the IMF to avoid going bankrupt when 14.5 billion euros of bond redemptions fall due in late March, but talks with its creditor banks broke down without an agreement on Friday.

A leading representative for the creditors said Athens was not the problem in the talks, suggesting the issue lay with terms insisted on by foreign lenders keeping Greece afloat with aid.

The head of Greece's debt agency and a senior adviser were travelling on Monday to Washington to meet International Monetary Fund officials, a government source said, and Athens put a brave face on the standoff.

"There is a little pause in these discussions. But I am confident that they will continue and we will reach an agreement that is mutually acceptable in time," Papademos said according to a transcript of an interview with CNBC.

Under the bailout terms agreed in October, Greek privately held debt would be reduced by half so that, together with structural reforms, the overall debt to GDP ratio of Greece would fall to 120 percent in 2020 from 160 percent now.

Inspectors from the EU, the IMF and the ECB, due in Athens on Tuesday for talks on a second, 130-billion-euro bailout, have warned they need the deal with the private sector to achieve that debt-reduction goal before they agree to give more aid.

Papademos said talks on these two processes must be completed over the next two to three weeks.

"This is the objective. I think the conditions are in place in order to do so," Papademos told the broadcaster.