Greece began tough negotiations with its creditors yesterday as hopes grew of a deal to replace its detested bailout after new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras pushed his case at a European summit.

Officials from Athens held technical discussions with the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank in Brussels ahead of a last-ditch meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Monday.

European and Asian stock markets yesterday rose on the more positive mood after hard-left leader Tsipras met German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the leader of Europe's biggest economy, and other counterparts in Brussels.

Tsipras vowed after his election in January to replace the current 240-billion-euro ($270-billion) EU-IMF bailout with its heavy austerity measures, and to ditch the so-called troika of its creditors.

But with the Greek rescue programme due to expire at the end of the month, time is running out to prevent a possible Greek default and a potentially catastrophic exit from the 19-country eurozone.

A senior EU official closely involved in yesterday's technical-level talks said that a new bailout programme was an option, despite the insistence of Greece's eurozone counterparts until now that Athens stick to the current rescue package.

"It is not crucial to extend. One could also agree that one will commence discussions on a new programme," the EU official said on condition of anonymity. "I would not exclude it."

While the Greek negotiators are meeting the same group of creditors they have vowed to abandon, the EU official also raised the possibility of a new format, or at the very least a new name for the group.

"There is no desire on anybody's part necessarily to call it the 'troika'," he said.

There was cautious optimism on Friday in Greece, which has suffered from the harsh austerity measures imposed under the international bailouts that have kept it from bankruptcy since 2010.

Greek stocks were up 4.65 percent, even though new data showed Greece's recovery from recession stalled in the last quarter of 2014 amid the political crisis that led to Tsipras's election and the ouster of the conservative government.

"Bridge of dialogue," wrote centre-left Ethnos daily while liberal Kathimerini saw a "window of opportunity for compromise."