Greece dispatches team to secure last-minute debt deal

Greek premier Alexis Tsipras dispatched a team of his top advisers to Brussels on Saturday to thrash out a deal to avert a default by Greece that European officials now say could be imminent.

The leftist government in Athens will offer its international creditors, the EU and IMF, a latest proposal it says is enough to end a five-month war of nerves to unlock vital bailout funds, avert a default and keep Greece from crashing out of the euro.

"We will have a deal... The fact that the Greek delegation is going to Brussels is a good sign," deputy finance minister Dimitris Mardas told Skai TV in Athens.

Whatever needs to be done "needs to be done quickly", he said, amid reports in Athens that the Greeks would offer concessions on key red lines.

The delegation was expected in Brussels later on Saturday and would sit down with top negotiators from the EU commission, the ECB as well as the IMF.

The urgency increased exponentially on Friday when Europes top economic officials said they had for the first time ever discussed the prospects of Athens defaulting on their huge debts.

"In discussions, a default was mentioned as one of the scenarios that can happen when everything goes wrong," a eurozone official told AFP on condition of anonymity after talks in Bratislava Friday.

The bombshell came a day after the International Monetary Fund, Greeces most hardline creditor, pulled its technical team from Brussels because it was dissatisfied with the state of the negotiations.

The Athens stock market crashed 6 percent when news of the contingency plans emerged, and fears are high that markets could tumble further Monday without signs of progress in talks over the weekend.

The long-running saga over Greeces refusal to...