You could almost hear the gritted teeth through which the International Monetary Fund issued its terse statement acknowledging that Athens planned to miss Friday’s deadline for making a €300m (£219m) debt repayment.
The Washington-based lender, which was always wary about being dragged into Europe’s debt crisis, didn’t condemn Greece’s actions, let alone suggest that deferring the payment was tantamount to default.
It simply restated that in a little-known loophole adopted in the late 1970s, “country members can ask to bundle together multiple principal payments falling due in a calendar month”. But it was clear that the IMF had received little warning of Greece’s plans.
Yanis Varofakis, the country’s pugnacious finance minister, has long argued that the end of June, when the four-month extension to the country’s bailout programme the Syriza government won in February expires, is the real deadline for reaching an agreement.
But the lastminute decision to delay the payment, just hours after IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde, said she fully expected it to arrive, smacked of both desperation and defiance.
Greece’s stance is likely to infuriate the IMF, which doesn’t want to shoulder the blame for pushing Greece into default, but reportedly believes current plans for tackling its debt burden remain unrealistic.
Even with the rest of the month now apparently available to secure a deal, the distance between Greece and its creditors remains considerable, as leaked negotiating texts from both sides suggested on Thursday.
Meanwhile, both the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, who faces an uphill struggle selling any deal to his party, and Varoufakis, who has been sidelined from the talks but remains finance minister, have continued to make pungent public statements about the sacrifices of the Greek people.
A deal still remains just about possible; but as the IMF ponders the ramifications of letting Friday pass without receiving its cheque, and Tsipras prepares to do battle with his own party over the creditors’ latest set of demands, it feels like an increasingly slim hope.
