Dutch minister voices Greece doubts, urges bigger firewall

PARIS (Reuters) - The Dutch finance minister said he has doubts over Greece's ability to implement its new bailout programme and said the euro zone's temporary EFSF rescue fund should be merged with its permanent ESM mechanism to raise their combined firepower.

Jan Kees de Jager told Le Monde newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday that even new surveillance measures approved at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday had not calmed his concerns about Greece's commitment to implement reforms, given its failure under a previous programme.

"To be honest, I have doubts, but it's the best we could do," he told the newspaper, urging a strengthening of the euro zone's firewall around Greece.

"We are ready to combine the two funds at our disposal to reach a firepower of 750 billion euros (631.4 billion pounds). We will see if we can do that by March. You have to ask Germany, which has opposed that since October."

De Jager said the IMF, which is providing around one tenth of the new 130 billion euro programme for Greece, should be making up one-third, as it did with a previous bailout. He called on the United States to urge the IMF to do more.

(Reporting By Daniel Flynn; editing by Anna Willard)