Greece nears deal with private creditors: official Private creditors negotiating with Greek leaders on a writedown of part of the country's debt to avoid a looming default said Saturday they were close to concluding an agreement next week. Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos led the 90-minute talks with Institute of International Finance (IIF) chief Charles Dallara ahead of a European summit on Monday. After the two-hour meeting, Dallara and colleague Jean Lemierre said in a statement, "Further progress was made, building on the understandings reached yesterday (Friday) on the key legal and technical issues. "We are close to the finalisation of a voluntary PSI within the framework expressed publicly earlier this week by Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker in his capacity as chairman of the Eurogroup," the statement said, using the acronym for a so-called Private Sector Involvement deal. "We expect to conclude next week as discussions on other issues move forward," it added. Venizelos told reporters he was hopeful of a deal within days. We have prepared all the technical and legal texts, and major progress has been made. ... In principle we will conclude (an agreement) next week. The meeting followed talks lasting two hours on Friday evening. Venizelos also held another meeting with the representatives of the international troika made up of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, a government source said. The troika is trying to make Greece's 350 billion euro (462 billion dollar) debt mountain sustainable by 2020. The talks were to focus on the austerity measures and deregulation demanded by the troika in order to release the second bailout, initially agreed in October, for 130 billion euros. Greece is trying to wrap up a PSI deal with private creditors for them to accept a 50 percent reduction on the 200 billion euros in debt they hold, with talks previously snagged on the amount of interest to be paid on the remaining debt. A meeting in Brussels on Monday will focus on a new fiscal pact. The IIF is the world's only global association of financial institutions, created in 1983 in response to the international debt crisis of the early 1980s.