Euro zone downbeat on chances of Greek deal next week

BERLIN/ATHENS (Reuters) - The euro zone is doubtful that a deal will be struck with Greece NEXT (NXT.LO)week on economic reforms for bailout funds, potentially leaving the country perilously short of money.

Both the Greek government and its creditors have expressed the need for an agreement, at least in outline, to be reached when euro zone finance ministers meet in the Latvian capital Riga on April 24. But Athens has yet to produce a program of reforms that is deemed acceptable.

The German government said on Wednesday it was unrealistic to expect euro zone countries to be able to pay out a new tranche of aid to Greece this month.

"We are negotiating with Greece at the moment. If there is a reform list, then the next step is a so-called Staff Level Agreement to make formal changes to the conditions of the aid program. This is a complex process and no one in the Eurogroup expects this to be concluded by April 24," a finance ministry spokeswoman said.

Berlin is not alone. Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kazimir also doubted the chances of a breakthrough next week.

"Given that we have lost a lot of time, I am skeptical," Kazimir told reporters after a Slovak cabinet meeting.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, elected on a promise to end austerity, is balking at politically sensitive reforms of the pension system and labor markets to which his conservative predecessor had agreed.

EU sources say Brussels is pushing Athens towards more rapidly applicable measures to liberalize product and service markets instead.

Athens is dangerously close to running out of cash, with its reserves expected to dip into negative territory after April 20, a source familiar with the matter has previously said.

The government could still get by for another couple of weeks by using one-off measures or trying to raid the last remaining cash reserves at state entities - a tactic it has been using in recent months.

But without a deal in Riga, Athens could be forced to choose between making wages and pension payments of 1.6 billion euros due at the end of the month or upcoming debt payments in May. Greece must make payments of about 1 billion euros in May, most of it owed to the IMF.

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Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis will be in Washington later this week for G20/IMF meetings.

He will meet both U.S. President Barack Obama and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi while he is there, his ministry said.

The German finance spokeswoman said even after a ministerial agreement, Greece would have to pass new laws and its creditors would want to review progress.

"If people are under the impression that aid could be paid out in April, I think this is wrong," she said.

Speculation has been rife in recent days that Tsipras may call snap elections if Greece does not secure outside help, something his government has strongly denied.

"There is no point in calling elections," State Minister Alekos Flabouraris told Greek TV. "They took place two months ago, we received a specific mandate which we will serve. We do not need elections, I rule it out 100 percent," he said.

Athens sold 812.5 million euros ($859 million) of three-month Treasury bills on Wednesday, successfully covering the entire amount it sought to raise in the second of two auctions this month that tested its ability to find funds.

European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis told Reuters on Monday that Greece was not moving fast enough to draw up structural reforms and time was running short to prevent it running out of cash.

(Reporting by Noah Barkin and Caroline Copley in Berlin, Tatiana Jancarikova in Bratislava and Deepa Babington in Athens. Writing by Mike Peacock Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)