Eurozone's Greek aid is full of unanswered questions

* Would eurozone assistance be triggered only if Greece were unable to meet its immediate funding needs — some 20 billion euros to refinance between April 20 and end-May — on the financial markets, or if it deemed the cost too high?

* Who would determine the appropriate rate at which to lend money to Greece and how?

* How much aid would be made available? Greece's total borrowing requirement for this year is 53 billion euros, of which about 13 billion have been raised so far.

* Would eurozone countries provide bilateral loans or create a stand-by facility for Greece along IMF lines and disburse aid in tranches subject to reciprocal spending cuts and restructuring measures?

Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker would only say that aid would not be in the form of loan guarantees, presumably because that would breach the so-called “no bailout” clause in the EU treaty.

In the absence of answers to these questions, everything now hinges on whether the spread on Greek paper falls by mid-April.

Athens got a small boost on Tuesday when credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's ended a downgrade review of Greece by affirming its BBB+/A-2 rating, although it said the longer-term outlook on the rating remained negative.

S&P praised the government's recent deficit reduction measures but questioned whether the Greeks would be able to stay the multi-year course of painful fiscal consolidation.

Moody's is the last of the major credit watchdogs to give Greece an A rating, which means Greek paper is eligible collateral for European Central Bank refinancing operations.

If the rating slipped to B grade, Greek government bonds would no longer be accepted when the ECB reverts to pre-crisis rules at the end of this year, although ECB governing council member Axel Weber said last week that cut-off might be replaced by a sliding scale on which the central bank would lend against lower-grade collateral while taking a higher “haircut,” or risk margin.

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