Greece announced Sunday that it had reached an agreement on a long-delayed rescue package that will require years of painful fiscal belt-tightening, but the deal probably will not defuse the potential threats to other European countries also suffering from mounting debts and troubled economies.<\/p>\n
“I have done and will do everything not to let the country go bankrupt,” Prime Minister George Papandreou said in a televised address that urged Greeks to accept “great sacrifices” to avoid “catastrophe.”<\/p>\n
The bailout, which was worked out over weeks of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and Greece’s European partners, calls for as much as \u00e2\u201a\u00ac110 billion, or $145 billion, in loans intended to stave off an immediate debt default and stop the spread of economic contagion to other parts of the region.<\/p>\n
But analysts warned that Greece itself has not yet solved its fundamental problems and that other sovereign debt crises could arise as lenders and market speculators turn their attention to a handful of similarly vulnerable nations.<\/p>\n