by Our Foreign Desk

GREECE struggled with conflicting stories yesterday, facing the venom of creditors determined to wreck the government’s street-level support by using forced bank closures coupled with open threats.

Following Tuesday night’s breakdown of negotiations and Greece’s failure to meet €1.6 billion (£1.1bn) of payments due to the International Monetary Fund, the Syriza government had attempted to reopen negotiations on a new bailout, only for them to collapse almost immediately.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble rejected suggestions that a new bailout agreement with Greece was possible before Sunday’s referendum.

But he also noted that Greece’s existing bailout programme had expired, so the agreement being presented in the referendum no longer existed.

This appeared to leave the Greek government with no options at all except abject surrender or withdrawal from the EU.

However, with Syriza’s total commitment to the European Union, even that nuclear option was not available to it.

So, given that commitment, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras did the only thing left to him. He sent a two-page letter to Greece’s creditors, saying that his country would accept the terms published by the European Commission on Sunday with a small number of amendments.

They included maintaining a reduction of value-added tax for Greek islands and maintaining a pension supplement — for the time being.

Mr Tsipras, speaking on television, nevertheless maintained that he was still calling for a No vote in Sunday’s referendum.

Meanwhile, on the streets of Greek cities, queues formed outside banks and cash machines as thousands of elderly people thronged banks that were opened for pensioners without bank cards to allow them access to money.

Withdrawals were limited to €120 per person per week.Banks have been closed since Monday after the government imposed strict capital controls to prevent a run of withdrawals.

Elsewhere, an opinion poll showed that a majority of Greeks would vote No in the referendum.

According to the poll, conducted between June 28 and 30 and published in the Efimerida ton Syntakton newspaper, 54 per cent of those planning to vote would oppose the bailout, against 33 per cent in favour.

However, a breakdown of the results from before and after Sunday’s decision to close the banks and impose capital controls showed the gap narrowing sharply.