DHAKA: German chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out cancelling any of Greece’s debt, saying banks and creditors have already made substantial cuts.

But Merkel told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper she still wanted Greece to stay in the eurozone, reports the BBC.

Greece’s left-wing Syriza party won last weekend’s election with a pledge to have half the debt written off.

Its finance minister said the ‘troika’ of global institutions overseeing Greek debt was a ‘rotten committee’.

The troika - the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund - had agreed a €240bn bailout with the previous Greek government.

But new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has refused to work with the troika to renegotiate the bailout terms and has already begun to roll back the austerity measures the creditors had demanded of the previous government.

BDST: 1604 HRS, JAN 31, 2015