GREEK Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said there are still doubts on the agreement needed to secure a €130 billion ($172 billion) rescue package for his country ahead of a meeting of euro area finance ministers today.

“There are issues outstanding that must be resolved by the time the euro group meets,” Venizelos told reporters in Athens on Thursday after a meeting with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and European Union and International Monetary Fund officials that ended just before 6 a.m. “As the prime minister said, there is agreement on all the issues bar one.”

The meeting with the so-called troika of lenders, representing the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF, took place after leaders of the three parties supporting the government met Papademos and failed to resolve a dispute over pension cuts.

The latest hitch comes as the sides battle to complete a package that’s been on the table since July. Greece faces a €14.5 billion bond payment on March 20 and is struggling to secure financing to avert a collapse of the economy that could spark a new round of contagion in the euro area.

Papademos and the leaders of the three parties supporting the government “agreed on all the points of the program with the exception of one which requires further elaboration and discussion” with the lenders, according to an e-mailed statement from the premier’s office in Athens. “This discussion will occur immediately so that it can be completed in light of the meeting of euro area finance ministers” yesterday.

Asian stocks fell from a six-month high as Greek leaders struggled to reach agreement on the spending cuts. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 0.1 percent as of 2:42 p.m. in Tokyo, paring yesterday’s 1.3 percent rally. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures slipped 0.1 percent and the euro was little changed against the dollar at $1.3272.

European and International Monetary Fund officials who met with Papademos said the government has 15 days to identify cuts worth €300 million, said a Greek government official who declined to be named and spoke to reporters in Athens after the meeting.

“There is only one issue, that of pensions, to be resolved,” Antnis Samaras of the New Democracy party, the country’s second-biggest party, told reporters in comments televised live on state-run NET TV. “The talks will continue.”

A separate government official, who also declined to be identified, said Samaras, Pasok party leader George Papandreou and George Karatzaferis of the Laos party all submitted alternative proposals to avoid pension cuts. The leaders have effectively agreed on all the issues except for that of cuts to pensions, Panos Beglitis, a spokesman for the Pasok socialist party, told reporters after the meeting. He said his party was opposed to cuts in main pensions and that talks revolved around finding alternatives to make up for a €300-million shortfall.

Papademos was in phone contact with the three political party leaders backing his government during the consultations with the troika, said a third government official, speaking on condition of anonymity. No new meeting of the leaders is planned for today, he said.

Venizelos said he was flying to Brussels to attend the meeting of finance ministers. He said he hoped they would take a “positive decision” on a new loan package.

A decision has hung in the balance for the past six days as lenders demand officials sign on to measures ranging from a reduction in the minimum wage and lower pensions, to immediate job cuts for as many as 15,000 state employees.

Greece doesn’t have much time left to arrange financing for its bond payment and avoid “outright default,” said Thomas Mayer, chief economist at Deutsche Bank.

“If they don’t have the money in the account at the time the payment is due, then they really default,” Mayer said yesterday in a radio interview on “Bloomberg—The First Word” with Ken Prewitt. “Time is of the essence. I think we have maybe one, maybe two, maybe three more days but that’s it.”

The tussle in Athens threatens to hold up a vital element of the plan: a debt swap that will slice €100 billion off more than 200 billion euros of privately held debt. The rescue blueprint includes a loss of more than 70 percent for bondholders in the voluntary debt exchange as well as loans that will probably exceed the €130 billion now on the table. A formal offer for the debt swap must be made by February 13 to allow all procedures to be completed before the March 20 bond comes due.

Parliament may be called to vote on the terms of the writedown on February 12, state-run Athens News Agency reported on February 7, without saying how it got the information.

“History tells us that a deal in Greece will be reached at the last minute,” said Shane Oliver, Sydney-based head of investment strategy at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., which has almost $100 billion under management. “A lot of indications show they are heading in that direction even though there are endless delays.”

Euro region finance ministers were set to convene in Brussels at 6 p.m. yesterday. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the meetings, announced the gathering in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday, without specifying the agenda. The region’s politicians must sign off on any aid accord reached by negotiators.

European Central Bank policy-makers were also set to hold their monthly meeting yesterday in Frankfurt, facing questions on their potential role in helping Greece reduce its debt as the threat of a disorderly default mounts.

Karatzaferis, the head of Laos, the smallest of the parties supporting Papademos, may yet hold up an agreement even if the pension issue is resolved. He said he wanted assurances that the measures were legal.

Karatzaferis “expressed serious reservations,” the premier’s office said in its statement after the meeting. Private creditors planned to meet in Paris yesterday to discuss the deal, which is contingent on the country agreeing to the aid package from European and international officials.

The Institute of International Finance is holding the meeting to go over technical matters so that if an accord between Greece and the troika is reached, the debt swap could be implemented quickly, said two people familiar with the matter.

While the prime minister and party chiefs have agreed to make further cuts this year equal to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product, political leaders are worried about the effect on voters of further cuts in wages and pensions ahead of elections due as early as April.

Unions, which went on strike this week, have derided the conditions as “blackmail.”

“During these difficult times, we must look at ordinary people, at the pensioner,” New Democracy’s Samaras said. “I don’t have the right not to do it, I don’t have the right not to negotiate hard.”

Greece will pledge permanent spending cuts, including lower pension payments and a 20-percent reduction in the minimum wage, as the economy contracts this year at a faster pace than originally estimated, according to the draft of the agreement discussed at the meeting with party heads, and obtained by Bloomberg News.