Greece is said to have reached a deal with creditors on a new multibillion euro bailout package, according to a senior finance ministry official.
The country's Finance Minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, has confirmed just "two or three small details" remain in the bailout negotiations, according to Reuters.
Negotiations between Athens and lenders had dragged on throughout the night, and any new agreement would allow the indebted country to make a €3.2bn debt repayment to the European Central Bank on time.
"Finally, we have white smoke," one official remarked.
This signals that agreement has been reached on two of the key issues where Germany required greater concessions from the Greeks – namely the scale and pace of a privatisation of State-owned companies and the size and growth rate of the budget surplus it should achieve over the coming years – excluding debt.
Both sides seem to have agreed on a targeted surplus of 0.25% of GDP in the current year rising to 3.5% by 2018.
Once a deal is finalised, Greece could receive an initial capital injection of €10bn, which would help banking operations return to normal.
Politicians in Athens had earlier said that they expected the bailout package to be approved by Greece's parliament by Thursday at the latest, enabling eurozone finance ministers to vet the deal on Friday.
Yesterday, an unnamed Greek delegate had said both sides had "started the final stretch" of the talks - "combing through the final text sentence by sentence, word by word".
Talks on this international bailout - Greece's third - had begun on 20 July.
During Monday's negotiations, a senior ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested any bailout should be offered in smaller chunks.
Ralph Brinkhaus told a German radio station: "The more money is handed out in one stroke, the less leverage one has to stop payments if the reform process in Greece does not pan out as planned and promised.
"A lot of trust has been lost in recent months."
The deal, if confirmed, paves the way for approval by eurozone finance ministers later this week, ratification by a number of parliaments, including the German parliament next week, and repayment by Greece of a €3.6bn loan to the European Central Bank on August 20 – Thursday week.
