IMF agrees reduction of debt in Greece is required

The International Monetary Fund, a big Greek creditor, conceded a point on Thursday that the Athens government has long been making: Without some reduction in the country’s staggering debt load, Greece has little hope of a sustained economic recovery.

It was a significant acknowledgment, and an indication that if or when bailout negotiations resume, Greece might win some relief from its debt of 300 billion euros, or about $330 billion. It just might not be relief granted to the leftist government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

The I.M.F. argued on Thursday that the five-month-old government bore the blame for having made Greece’s economic situation so much worse that a new €50 billion relief program is now necessary.

The organization did not mention Mr. Tsipras or his party by name, but said the country’s economy and finances had deteriorated sharply because of government policies since the end of last year. Mr. Tsipras took office in January.

The report is likely to stoke tensions with Greece’s European creditors at a critical moment, just ahead of a Greek national referendum on Sunday over whether to accept a bailout package that Mr. Tsipras has opposed — in part because it does not contain debt relief. By essentially concluding that any new bailout deal for Greece must include debt relief, the I.M.F., whether intentionally or not, turned up the pressure on Europe to acknowledge that point.

A Greek government spokesman, Gavriil Sakellaridis, instead of responding to the I.M.F.’s criticism on Thursday, noted that the report agreed with the government that Greece needed debt relief. The report, Mr. Sakellaridis said, “fully vindicated the Greek government, both as regards its opinion about the unsustainability of the Greek debt and as regards its insistence that any new agreement with creditors must definitely include a debt restructuring or haircut.”