Greece's Tsipras Asserts Control over Party with Congress Vote

At a meeting of the Syriza movement's 200-member central committee held in an old cinema hall, Tsipras defended his decision to accept harsh bailout terms as the best deal anyone could win for Greece.

He threw down the gauntlet before his critics by proposing an immediate membership ballot on the bailout negotiation, but said his preference was for Syriza to hold an emergency congress in September to deliberate strategy.

After hours of debate, the committee backed his proposal in a show of hands. The emergency congress will allow Tsipras to bring in new members and capitalize on the wider public support he has secured over the past two years, making it easier to defeat the far-left camp.

"We are telling the Greek people, loud and clear and with no remorse, that this is the deal we managed to bring to them and if there is someone who thinks that they could have achieved a better deal, let them come out and say that," he told the session that included dissenters like parliament speaker Zoe Konstantopoulou.

Greece narrowly averted an exit from the euro zone when it struck an 11th-hour deal with lenders this month, but that cost Tsipras the support of a quarter of his lawmakers who accuse the party of betraying its anti-austerity roots.

The deepening crisis within Syriza is the most serious political challenge to Tsipras, who otherwise enjoys unrivalled domination of Greek politics and remains popular despite his sudden U-turn to accept stringent bailout terms.

Failure to quash the far-left revolt could plunge Greece back into turmoil and risk derailing talks now quietly underway in Athens with the European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and the euro zone's rescue fund on a new 86 billion euro loan package.

In another potential setback for the talks, the Financial Times reported that IMF staff had recommended to the Fund's executive board that it should not take part for now in a third bailout because of Greece's poor compliance record and the unsustainable level of its debt.

Only if Athens improved its track record of implementing reforms and its euro zone partners agreed to a substantial debt restructuring would the IMF consider joining the program at a later stage, the FT reported, citing a confidential summary of a board meeting held on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

An IMF official said the Fund would approve new loans for Greece only if Athens reached a deal with European governments that would ensure it can pay its debts, and there was "no expectation" that talks over the next couple of weeks would get to the point where the Fund could approve a new program.

Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos is due to hold his first meeting with senior representatives of the country's creditors, including the IMF, in Athens on Friday, Reuters reported.