ATHEN- Greece is aim­ing to com­plete ne­go­ti­a­tions on its debt swap deal by the end of the week, the gov­ern­ment's spokesman said yes­ter­day, adding that the talks were at their "most del­i­cate phase." Charles Dal­lara, head of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance - the body rep­re­sent­ing banks and oth­er in­vest­ment firms that hold a large part of Greece's debt - will head back to Athens on Thurs­day for the ne­go­ti­a­tions on a bond swap, known as the Pri­vate Sec­tor In­volve­ment. "The tar­get is to con­clude the PSI agree­ment even with­in this week," gov­ern­ment spokesman Pan­telis Kap­sis told re­porters in Athens.

The du­ra­tion of Dal­lara's stay in Athens "will de­pend very much on the out­come of the ne­go­ti­a­tions," IIF spokes­woman Emi­ly Vogl said. An IIF state­ment added: "The goal is to agree on all out­stand­ing le­gal and tech­ni­cal is­sues as soon as pos­si­ble." On the front line of Eu­rope's sov­er­eign debt cri­sis, Athens is try­ing to get its pri­vate cred­i­tors to swap their Greek gov­ern­ment bonds for new ones with half their face val­ue, there­by slic­ing some &eu­ro;100 bil­lion (US$130 bil­lion) off its debt. The new bonds would al­so push the re­pay­ment dead­lines 20 to 30 years in­to the fu­ture.

AP