ATHENS: Greece wants tax cuts, extra help for the poor and unemployed, a freeze on public sector lay-offs and more time to cut its deficit under a plan likely to run into strong opposition at a European Union summit next week.

The new coalition government's programme reflected public pressure to ease the terms of a 130 billion euro ($163bn) bailout saving Greece from bankruptcy but only at the cost of harsh economic suffering.

If implemented in full, the new programme would undo many austerity measures the country agreed in February to clinch the bailout package, its second since 2010.

Euro zone partners have offered adjustments but no radical rewrite of the bailout conditions, with paymaster Germany particularly resistant to Greek calls for leniency.

Greece's programme includes a call for the recapitalisation of the country's fifth-largest lender, ATEbank - a state-owned agricultural bank that EU sources said this month was among several lenders the European Commission wanted to be wound down. The finance ministry has denied that report.

The programme, agreed by leaders of the three-party coalition after a June 17 election, faces its first test at a two-day EU summit starting next Thursday and sure to be dominated by the debt crisis that started in Greece and is now threatening to engulf Italy and Spain.

Inspectors from Greece's "troika" of lenders - the EU, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund - are due in Athens tomorrow to review the country's progress.

Euro zone officials have said the bailout package should be revised only to reflect time lost on two elections since early May and a deeper than expected recession.

"The general target is for there to be no further reductions in wages or pensions and no more taxes," the Greek government programme said.