ATHENS, Greece- Greece's be­lea­guered gov­ern­ment is brac­ing for a 48-hour gen­er­al strike as law­mak­ers de­bate a new round of aus­ter­i­ty re­forms de­signed to win the coun­try ad­di­tion­al res­cue loans need­ed avoid bank­rupt­cy.More than 5,000 po­lice are to guard Athens' city cen­ter Tues­day, with union protest ral­lies due to start at 10 am and head to Par­lia­ment. The strike is set to dis­rupt or halt most pub­lic ser­vices, with doc­tors, am­bu­lance dri­vers, jour­nal­ists and even ac­tors at a state-fund­ed the­ater join­ing the protest, which is to con­tin­ue Wednes­day. Flights will be ground­ed both days dur­ing stop­pages by air traf­fic con­trollers be­tween 8 am and mid­day and be­tween 6 pm and 10 pm.

Unions are an­gry at a new &eu­ro;28 bil­lion (US$40 bil­lion) aus­ter­i­ty pro­gram that would slap tax­es on min­i­mum wage earn­ers and oth­er strug­gling Greeks, fol­low­ing months of oth­er cuts that have seen un­em­ploy­ment surge to more than 16 per cent.The pack­age and im­ple­men­ta­tion law must be passed in par­lia­men­tary votes this week so the Eu­ro­pean Union and the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund re­lease the next in­stall­ment of Greece's &eu­ro;110 bil­lion (US$156 bil­lion) bailout loan.With­out it, Greece faces the prospect next month of be­com­ing the first eu­ro­zone coun­try to de­fault on its debts - a po­ten­tial­ly dis­as­trous event that could drag down Eu­ro­pean banks and af­fect oth­er fi­nan­cial­ly trou­bled Eu­ro­pean coun­tries. (AP)