CLEAR POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

Pressure for early elections had been steadily building in recent days.

Senior aides, such as Energy Minister Panos Skourletis, said the split with the party rebels who are threatening to break away had to be dealt with. "The political landscape must clear up. We need to know whether the government has or does not have a majority," he told ERT.

Syriza is expected to call a party congress in September to resolve differences with the rebels. But Skourletis said Tsipras should move faster. "I would say elections first, then the party congress," he said.

Calling elections in September means the vote will be held before voters start feeling the new bailout measures including further pension cuts, more value-added tax increases and a "solidarity" tax on incomes.

Knock-on effects of capital controls imposed in June, which are likely to stay until Greek banks are recapitalised later this year with bailout funds, will also hurt voters.

The other option had been to delay the vote till October, after international creditors have reviewed Greece's performance in keeping to the bailout programme. They will then start to consider some way of easing the country's huge debt burden.

Tsipras has long argued that Greece will never be able to repay all its debts and wants some to be written off. While the euro zone favours merely delaying interest and principal repayments, Tsipras could still present any debt relief moves as an achievement to the electorate.

Syriza members have argued that the party should aim for a majority, saying this would achieve the stable government which Greece has lacked through the past five years of crisis.

"These elections, whenever they are announced by the government, will provide a stable governing solution. My feeling is that Syriza will have an absolute majority," Dimitris Papadimoulis, a Syriza lawmaker in the European parliament, told Mega TV. ($1 = 0.8929 euros)