Gavriil Sakellaridis

Greece has gathered 600 million euros ($673.56 million) of local government and other public entity money as a result of a recent legislative act to help it deal with a cash crunch, the government's spokesman said on Tuesday.

 Varoufakis: Agreement will be in the offing in the next days, mostly weeks

France says talks between Greece and its bailout creditors are going the right way and hopes that Monday?s eurozone meeting will see the sides narrow their differences enough to have a deal "within hand?s grasp."

Talks between cash-strapped Athens and its institutional lenders ended on Sunday – as previously scheduled – without a final deal achieved, winding up a marathon round of negotiations that began on Thursday within the so-called “Brussels Group” framework.

Greece reshuffled its bailout-negotiation team in a political move aimed at easing negotiations with EU partners. Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was reined in after three months of talks with Greece’s creditors failed to unlock aid and resulted in acrimony at Friday’s Eurogroup meeting.

Government spokesman Gavriil Sakellaridis on Sunday called for action concerning dangerous refugee and migrant crossings in the Mediterranean following the tragic shipwreck claiming hundreds of lives in the waters south of Italy.

In a written announcement, he stated

The government on Tuesday set out the basic axes of an emergency plan to deal with an increased influx of immigrants into the country.

The Greek government on Tuesday afternoon announced new measures to deal with the issue of illegal immigration, which abruptly came back into the national spotlight with the arrival of thousands of refugees and economic migrants on Greek isles since the beginning of the year.

Government spokesman Gavriil Sakellaridis on Tuesday afternoon first announced that the leftist Greek government intended to issue "travel documents" to Syrian refugees that have requested asylum in Greece, in the wake of a massive influx of irregular migrants over the last three months onto several Greek islands.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis departed for Washington D.C. on Sunday morning to meet in the evening with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Christine Lagarde for unofficial talks over the Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) government's reforms plan.

Greece is preparing a package of reforms that will contain many of the government?s election pledges but will also satisfy many of the lenders? demands regarding changes they want to see the country make, the coalition says.