LON­DON-Glob­al mar­kets re­act­ed pos­i­tive­ly yes­ter­day af­ter Greece's par­lia­ment ap­proved a new set of aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures re­quired by in­ter­na­tion­al lenders in ex­change for a bailout that would save the coun­try from bank­rupt­cy next month. Dras­tic cuts in civ­il ser­vice jobs, min­i­mum wages and wel­fare were among the re­forms that law­mak­ers ap­proved in Athens, where an­ti-aus­ter­i­ty ri­ot­ers clashed with po­lice and torched dozens of build­ings. The protests, part of a surge in sen­ti­ment against the for­eign de­mands for cuts, saw 68 po­lice and 70 pro­test­ers hos­pi­talised.

Eu­ro­zone fi­nance min­is­ters will meet Wednes­day to dis­cuss progress in mak­ing Greece's debt talks, though the ap­proval of the &eu­ro;130 bil­lion (US$170 bil­lion) bailout pack­age is not ex­pect­ed be­fore ear­ly March.

Greek par­ty lead­ers will have to make a com­mit­ment in writ­ing to ad­here to the aus­ter­i­ty re­forms even af­ter an April gen­er­al elec­tion and iden­ti­fy an­oth­er &eu­ro;325 mil­lion (US$431 mil­lion) in sav­ings. Par­lia­ments in Ger­many, Fin­land and the Nether­lands will then have to vote on the bailout pack­age, at then end of Feb­ru­ary, be­fore it can be for­mal­ly ap­proved. Eu­ro­zone coun­tries al­so want to see what per­cent­age of Greece's pri­vate cred­i­tors take up the of­fer for a re­lat­ed bond swap be­fore they clear more help for Athens.

With­out the bailout and the bond swap deal, Greece will be pushed in­to a dis­or­der­ly de­fault on bond re­pay­ments on March 20, like­ly press­ing it in­to a dis­rup­tive ex­it from the eu­ro com­mon cur­ren­cy. That would see cause the coun­try's fi­nan­cial sec­tor to col­lapse, fu­el­ing fur­ther so­cial un­rest and desta­bil­is­ing the wider Eu­ro­pean and glob­al mar­kets.

Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.9 per cent at close to 5,905.7 while Ger­many's DAX added 0.7 per cent to 6,738.47 and France's CAC-40 was up slight­ly at 3,384.55 af­ter Japan's Nikkei 225 closed 0.6 per cent high­er at 8,999.18.

Look­ing ahead, in­vestors will al­so pre­pare for the re­lease of Eu­ro­pean eco­nom­ic growth fig­ures on Wednes­day. They are ex­pect­ed to show eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the 17-na­tion eu­ro­zone con­tract­ing in the fourth quar­ter, leav­ing the re­gion with one foot in re­ces­sion-the bloc is wide­ly ex­pect­ed to have shrunk again in the first quar­ter. Those fig­ures will not be avail­able un­til the spring. (AP)