The Greek cabinet will convene tomorrow, a government spokesman said, without
elaborating on what would be discussed.

The emergency meeting will be held at 10am Irish time.

Greece's main parties have been in talks over who to appoint as prime minister to lead a coalition agreed late yesterday, after European leaders piled pressure on Greece to resolve a politcal stalemate and push through a €130 billion euro bailout.

Lucas Papademos, a former deputy head of the European Central Bank, was today tipped to emerge as Greek prime minister as political leaders bargained over who will lead a new coalition to push through a bailout before the country runs out of money in mid-December.

With the European Union demanding a quick resolution to the political crisis, Prime Minister George Papandreou sealed a deal yesterday with the conservative opposition on the crisis coalition to approve the international financial aid package.

The White House urged the Greek government this evening to move as quickly as possible to fulfill its commitments under the debt rescue package but it declined to comment on the decision by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to resign.

"We welcome the consensus that has been reached in Greece over the need to implement the country's reforms, commitments to the IMF

and the European Union, and we urge the government to move as quickly as possible to fulfill the commitments," said White House press secretary Jay Carney.

Mr Papandreou informed European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, by phone on Monday about efforts to form the coalition, his office said.

The Greek leaders' job today was to agree a new prime minister, possibly a technocrat who must exert authority over hardened party chiefs from the centre-left and centre-right, and made decisions which will affect Greeks for a decade.

European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros said today he had been approached to become a possible candidate to lead the new coalition government.

"There was an exploratory phone call yesterday and no contact since," Mr Diamandouros told Reuters by telephone from Strasbourg where he is based.

"I did not rule out the possibility of contributing if certain conditions were met," he said when asked if he had been approached for the prime minister's post.

Mr Papandreou also spoke to conservative New Democracy party leader Antonis Samaras on the coalition, and his office said more talks would follow later in the day.

In an early sign that a broad compromise will be hard to achieve, President Karolos Papoulias's plan to summon the heads of all leading parties for more negotiations today was dropped after two leftist parties refused to attend.

However, the new prime minister will have their hands full merely getting Mr Papandreou's socialist Pasok party and the conservative New Democracy party of Mr Samaras to work together, regardless of whether the leaders join the cabinet.

"I'm afraid the new government will very soon turn out to be problematic," conservative former finance minister Stefanos Manos told Reuters.

"The new prime minister will . . . not give the impression that he is in charge. Everyone will be looking to the two party leaders who will be running things behind the scenes," he said, adding: "The civil service won't implement any decision and everyone will be waiting for the election."

Mr Papademos, who as Bank of Greece governor oversaw the nation's adoption of the euro in 2002 before moving to the European Central Bank, is a front runner as premier.

"The prime minister had several telephone contacts with Mr Papademos in the last days," a senior government official told reporters.

At least the two parties agreed on the likely life of the coalition, deciding early this morning that February 19th would be the preferred date - hours before Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos must explain Greece's plans when he meets his euro zone peers at a meeting in Brussels.

Brussels has piled pressure on Athens to approve the bailout, a last financial lifeline for Greece which faces big debt repayments in December, fearing that its crisis will spill into much bigger euro zone economies such as Italy and Spain - which would be far harder to rescue.

The coalition agreement came after the EU told the parties to explain by Monday evening's Eurogroup meeting how they would form a unity government to secure the €130 billion funding.

Mr Papandreou, who sealed his fate last week with an attempt to call a referendum on the bailout which backfired, will stand down when the new government takes over.

Additional reporting: Reuters