Greece’s new anti-austerity government held its first talks with its eurozone partners yesterday about securing a reduction in debts linked to its €240-billion (£180bn) bailout.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his team met eurozone group of finance ministers head Jeroen Dijsselbloem in an encounter that Athens said would mark the start of negotiations revising the conditions of Greece’s bailout.

But first reports of the talks showed little movement from either side.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said after the meeting that his government will not co-operate with the EU and IMF — and will not seek an extension to the bailout programme.

“This platform enabled us to win the confidence of the Greek people,” he said.

“Our first action … will not be to compromise questioning this platform with a request to extend it.”

Mr Varoufakis said he had assured Mr Dijsselbloem that Athens planned to make the economy more competitive and have balanced budgets but it would not accept a “self-

fed crisis” of deflation and non-viable debt.

Mr Dijsselbloem warned the new government to respect the existing agreement and against taking unilateral steps, adding that continuing European support depended on Greece honouring its obligations.

The talks had offered little prospect of swift success since they were preceded by an EU warning that there was no support for cutting the debt.

Germany bluntly rebuffed any suggestion that Greece should be forgiven any part of it. A Finance Ministry spokesman said “the discussion about a debt cut or a debt conference is divorced from reality.”

He added that “if the measures announced by Athens were implemented, one has to ask whether the basis of the programme wouldn’t be called into question and therefore pointless.”

Ahead of the meeting the Syriza-led government had announced the first moves to reverse changes stemming from the bailout.

And the EU countries were clearly unnerved by their scope.

Privatisations were halted, the minimum wage level was restored to pre-“troika” levels, while fees for hospital visits were scrapped along with prescription charges and laid-off public-sector workers were re-employed.