President: Greece to break encirclement by creditors

Greece will be "victorious" in efforts to break out of "encirclement" by its EU-IMF creditors, President Karolos Papoulias said on Tuesday. "Our people is waging a struggle to break the encirclement of the creditors," the 84-year-old president told reporters after a military parade held annually in Athens to commemorate the Greek independence war against the Ottoman Empire. "(Our) history guarantees that this fight will also be victorious," said Papoulias, a former World War II resistance fighter. Greece is struggling to emerge from a highly unpopular austerity framework adopted in 2010 in return for bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund and European Union. The country has been mired in recession, and unemployment has soared in the past four years, but the economy is expected to switch back into slight growth this year. Greece has also announced it intends to return to borrowing normally on financial markets in the second half of the year with a sale of five-year bonds to raise 1.5-2.0 billion euros ($2-3 billion). The military parade was held under tight security with about 3,000 police at hand. The measure was enacted after anti-austerity protesters disrupted a parade in Thessaloniki in 2011, at the height of the Greek crisis.