Greek police fire tear gas on angry protesters

Greek anti-riot police fired tear gas at 10,000 protesters outside parliament Tuesday after youths hurled firebombs as a general strike against the bankruptcy-threatened government turned ugly. An AFP correspondent said tear gas hung heavily in the air around the giant square, a magnet for anti-government demonstrators who reject Prime Minister George Papandreou\'s latest austerity measures aimed at securing a new European bailout. At least one protester was injured, police said, after clashes broke out around 3:00 pm (1200 GMT) with youths setting bins alight and attacking a McDonalds restaurant. Television pictures showed several fires in the area, and an AFP reporter witnessed a truck ablaze near the square. The escalation came during a blanket power cut ordered by unions on the first day of a 48-hour general strike that grounded planes and ships and brought most public transport in Athens to a halt. As the pressure built ahead of a first vote Wednesday on tax rises, spending cuts and a raft of cheap sell-offs, lead European Union bailout negotiator Olli Rehn warned in Brussels that Greece had reached \"a critical juncture.\" Protestors, determined to block passage of the package, a condition for emergency financial aid needed to prevent default, said Europe was imposing its will on Athens. \"We don\'t want your money Europe,\" Iamando, 36, told AFP on the square outside the legislature. \"Leave us alone -- please, please, please.\" The number of police in the centre of the capital rose to 4,000, according to authorities, with traffic unable to circulate in central Athens. Only metro drivers decided not to strike, to allow Athenians to swell protest numbers. Flights were cancelled or delayed, and at the port of Pireus, near Athens, about 200 militant unionists staged a picket to prevent ferries from leaving as the peak tourist season gets under way. Banks, too, were closed and hospitals operated with reduced staffing. Earlier, one of the protesters warned they would be back even after police moved in. \"We\'re like the donkey -- the more you hit it, the more determined it gets,\" Omiros (Homer), 29, told AFP. Prime Minister George Papandreou begged lawmakers Monday night to back his plans to slice 28.4 billion euros from government spending by 2015, and sell off the national silver to meet EU and IMF demands for reform. In a rare criticism of the government, the governor of the Bank of Greece, Giorgos Provopoulos told Tuesday\'s Kathimerini daily that \"piling more taxes on taxpayers has reached its limit.\" He said the new plan \"does not place enough emphasis on the containment of spending.\" Approval of the austerity measures by lawmakers would unblock 12 billion euros of emergency loans from last year\'s 110-billion-euro bailout and free eurozone finance ministers to start drawing up a second bailout for as much again at talks Sunday in Brussels. But even a former IMF board member, economist Miranda Xafa of Geneva-based investment managers IJ Partners, says the plan is deeply flawed. \"In the last year, 250,000 people lost their jobs in the private sector -- and none in the public sector,\" she told AFP. \"Now the country is bankrupt so it has no choice,\" she said. She was sceptical about a plan announced by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to persuade private sector creditors to extend their exposure to Greek public debt for the next 30 years, saying that would almost certainly be seen by the key international rating agencies as a \"selective\" default.