Greece hopeful of 'positive' climate at EU summit: source

(ATHENS) - Greece expects a "positive" climate at Thursday evening's EU summit despite a failure to agree on its anti-austerity demands a day earlier, a government source said.

"We estimate that the climate at the summit will eventually be positive," the source said.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wants to present a replacement plan for Greece's 240-billion-euro ($270-billion) EU-IMF bailout, which expires at the end of February.

But his left-wing government failed to secure an agreement to renegotiate the terms of the rescue package in marathon talks between eurozone finance ministers Wednesday night.

Greece refuses to extend its current bailout, but failure to agree a new deal means Athens could default and then almost certainly crash out of the 19-country eurozone.

Wednesday's talks failed to agree on a joint statement, with Germany rejecting an earlier draft and Greece then turning down the final version as "problematic", the Greek government source said.

European sources told AFP however that Greece had only raised objections following a 30-minute phone call between Varoufakis and Tsipras -- and after German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had already left on the understanding the statement had been approved.

The government also wants a bridging loan until September to buy time to hammer out a new reform and bailout programme and, crucially, to ditch inspections by the hated troika of creditors -- the EU, IMF and European Central Bank.

Athens is prepared to give up 7.2 billion euros in remaining bailout loans, provided that the European Central Bank delivers 1.9 billion euros in profits from Greek state bonds.

Greece also wants permission to issue an additional 10 billion euros in short-term debt.

And it also wants 11 billion euros in leftover bank support funds to be used to address non-performing loans weighing down the balance sheets of Greek lenders.