Yanis Varoufakis Resigns As Greece’s Finance Minister

The Greece’s embattle finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, abruptly resigned Monday morning in what appeared to be the first move at conciliation by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras toward the country’s creditors after Greek voters’ rejection on Sunday of a bailout linked to austerity.

Mr. Varoufakis’s announcement came as leaders around Europe sent conflicting signals about whether they would continue to support Greece, and whether a compromise could still be possible on a new bailout program or on debt relief — a question with implications not only for Athens but for the broader euro currency union.

In Germany, the eurozone country to which Greece owes the most money and the one that has tended to take the hardest line in the debt talks, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry said Berlin saw no new basis for negotiations with Athens at this point. The spokesman for Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, said that while Greece was still in the eurozone, it was up to Athens to determine whether the country would stay.

The Greek government said Monday afternoon that Mr. Tsipras and Ms. Merkel had spoken by telephone and had agreed that he would present new debt proposals on Tuesday, when eurozone leaders are to meet in Brussels.

At a news conference in Brussels on Monday, the European Commission’s vice president for euro affairs, Valdis Dombrovskis, said that the no vote in Greece would “dramatically weaken” the country’s negotiating stand with creditors and had made things “more complicated.”

“At the end of the day, it will produce very few or possibly no winners whatsoever,” Mr. Dombrovskis said.

But he added that now was the time to seek a way forward, and he held the door open to a possible compromise between Greece and its creditors. “If all sides are working seriously, it’s possible to find a solution, even in this very complicated situation,” Mr. Dombrovkis said.

The French finance minister, Michel Sapin, said on French radio on Monday that while Greece’s no vote “resolves nothing,” France could support debt relief for Greece should Mr. Tsipras come forward with a proposal containing “serious” terms for a new bailout package. Mr. Sapin’s remarks came ahead of a meeting set for Monday evening in Paris between President François Hollande of France and Ms. Merkel to discuss how now to deal with Greece.