Greece braces for large protests against budget cuts

Greece is braced for large protests against further budget cuts, following a 130bn-euro bailout deal aimed at avoiding bankruptcy.

There are fears of more violence during the rallies called by trade unions as the public mood hardens, a BBC correspondent in Athens said.

Meanwhile, the Government is finalising emergency legislation demanded by international lenders.

It says Greece has avoided a nightmare scenario by agreeing to the bailout.

The country has a week to approve a raft of spending cuts of more than 3bn euros tied to the bailout.

Emergency legislation, discussed by the Greek cabinet on Tuesday night, will be debated by MPs on Wednesday afternoon, although no vote is expected until Thursday. The bill proposes cutting the current 751-euro minimum monthly wage by 22%, and also further cuts of pensions, reports say.

A key part of the bailout deal - the debt writedown by holders of Greek bonds - will be discussed at committee level before going to a vote by MPs on Thursday.

The protest against measures demanded by the IMF and other eurozone governments has been planned to coincide with Wednesday's session of parliament.

A week ago, Athens saw its worst rioting in years as MPs passed a series of deeply unpopular austerity measures.

Greeks are a resilient people, well-versed in surmounting obstacles through their history. But that resilience is being sorely tested.

The country has been living with punishing austerity for much of the past two years: unemployment has reached record heights at over 21%, the economy contracted by 7% in the last quarter of 2011.

And now, with the bailout deal approved in Brussels, the cuts are set to get deeper still.

And Greeks are growing ever more doubtful that the path ahead will lead them out of this crisis. The government is acutely aware that support for the bailout and the austerity measures is costing it dearly in the opinion polls.

"Workers in our country refuse to accept the barbarity of the tougher neo-liberal measures that have been extortionately imposed by our creditors," the GSEE private sector trade union warned earlier this week.

On Tuesday, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said the deal had given Greece a new opportunity, and had "avoided the nightmare scenario".

George Papandreou speaking on BBC Hardtalk said ''We will not default and we will not exit the euro'' "What we have is the clear, explicit commitment of our peers that they will support us even after the end of the programme, until Greece returns to the markets," he said.

Opinion polls suggest that the two parties in the coalition government, which currently dominate parliament, are facing huge losses at the next election, scheduled for April.

Parties on the far left and far right, which are set to make big gains, are opposed to the bailout deal.