A hot sunny day at the Acropolis ancient citadel, Athens, Greece on June 24th, 2017              Photo: AFP/VNA)

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday approved a standby 1.8 billion USD loan to Greece. The fund will not be disbursed until Greece receives "specific and credible assurances" from its European lenders. The move is a compromise between eurozone finance ministers reluctant to offer more generous repayment terms to Greece and the IMF, which has resisted financing a country whose debt it considers too high to be fully paid back.