UPDATE 1-Greece says borrowing needs lonesome until mid-March

Sun Feb 21, 2010 5:22am EST Related News Greece says borrowing needs covered until mid-MarchSun, Feb 21 2010UPDATE 2-High borrowing costs for Greece threaten others-PMFri, Feb 19 2010SCENARIOS-The Greek crisis and the future of the euro zoneThu, Feb 18 2010Greece says not seeking EU taxpayers" moneyThu, Feb 18 2010Greece says not seeking EU taxpayers" moneyWed, Feb 17 2010

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LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Greece"s borrowing needs arecovered until mid-March and Athens so far is meeting goals setout in an austerity plan, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreousaid in an interview with BBC television broadcast on Sunday.

Market concerns about Greece"s debt pile have hit the euroin recent weeks.

"At this point we don"t have a need for borrowing, ourborrowing needs are covered until mid-March," he said inresponse to a question on whether there would be any new Greekbond issuance next week.

Papandreou said that despite street demonstrations againstausterity measures his government has taken to tackle the debtcrisis, he believed there was broad support in Greek society forpainful economic reforms.

"Even though there are austerity measures and they do hurt,we have the support right now for the austerity measures whichis around 50 to 60 percent of the population, and the governmentalso has that support," Papandreou said.

"What we"re seeing here, and I haven"t seen this exceptduring the Olympic Games in 2004, is a real sense of unity bythe Greek people of wanting to make a change," he said, blamingthe previous administration for Greece"s debt woes.

Papandreou said European Union partners should continue tooffer political support to Athens as it battles to get itspublic finances back onto a sustainable path.

"Let us together with the EU authorities, the Commission andthe European Central Bank, let"s sit down, let"s look at how ourprogress is doing, how we"re doing in the stability and growthplan that we have tabled," he said.

"We"re on target, beyond target on Jan statistics so we"redoing well. If we do need extra measures, we will take extrameasures in order to reduce our deficit this year by 4 percent.We"re ready to do so if necessary."

Papandreou said that while Greece was not asking forfinancial support from EU partners, it did need strong politicalbacking as it battled to restore its credibility with financialmarkets.

This was particularly important for Greece to be able toborrow at lower interest rates than it was currently facing, hesaid.

"We need the help so that we can borrow at the same rate asother countries, not at high rates which undermine our abilityto make the changes we need to make," he said. (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Karen Foster)

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