Greek Party Leaders Urge Yes Vote On Austerity

(Wall Street Journal) - The leaders of Greece's two major parties Saturday moved to rally their lawmakers behind painful austerity measures the country must take to gain a fresh bailout, ahead of a key parliamentary vote Sunday.

Speaking to a meeting of fellow Socialists, party chief George Papandreou said Greece was one step away from securing that badly needed aid package, and warned that failure to do so would lead to default and bring "chaos" to the country.

"Now is the moment of responsibility of all of us for the sake of the country," Papandreou said. "We are talking about making the big changes that have to happen so that Greece can address all the causes of the crisis."

Just minutes later, conservative New Democracy party leader Antonis Samaras, issued a similar call to his party deputies commanding them to toe the party line in the vote, now expected for Sunday night at 22:00 GMT (5:00pm ET).

Separately, the Greek finance minister told his party's deputies Saturday that the troika of Greece's lenders -- the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- proposed that Greece receive an additional €15 billion ($19.9 billion) on top of the agreed but not yet secured €130 billion ($172 billion) bailout to keep the country funded over the next three years.

Evangelos Venizelos, who has been charged with negotiating with the troika, told Socialist party members of parliament in a meeting that "eurozone countries are concerned that they'll have to go to their national parliaments and ask for even more money for Greece … and indeed the troika wanted us to get an extra €15 billion," but added that for Greece the priority was to secure the €130 billion originally agreed in October 2011.

In a sign of the anger on the streets, several dozen Communist demonstrators decried the austerity measures Saturday by unfurling protest banners on the Acropolis, the country's most iconic monument. Also Saturday, Greece's two main umbrella unions, private sector GSEE and private sector ADEDY, staged a rally outside parliament -- the latest in three days of protests -- and are also staging the second day of a 48-hour nationwide strike.

Read more: Wall Street Journal