L.A. fire chief blames slower response times on budget cuts

Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings turned the tables on City Council members Tuesday, blaming increased 911 response times on budget cuts approved by lawmakers.

"You gave us a budget," Cummings said during a nearly two-hour City Hall hearing. "We're giving you the most effective Fire Department that we can within that budget."

Cummings was summoned to appear before the council after he failed to produce a plan to improve service and response times, which have grown longer since budget cuts were ordered three years ago after the economic downturn.

The council asked for the blueprint in April. On Tuesday, Cummings was given an additional 60 days to submit the plan.

Cummings blamed the delay on the department's data problems, which have been the subject of multiple investigations by city auditors and outside experts. Years of response time data were found to be flawed and the LAFD has accurate data only for the last two to three months, Cummings said.

Reliable performance data from a longer period is needed before changes in the department deployment plan can be recommended, he said. Improvements will require more funding, he added.

"The simple answer is money," Cummings said. "The way we improve response times is by putting more resources in the field."

The department's performance has been under scrutiny since March when fire officials acknowledged producing inaccurate response time data that made it appear rescuers were getting to emergencies faster than they actually were.

Fire officials are dealing with other embarrassments. Federal officials are investigating whether confidential information was obtained illegally on hundreds of patients who rode in Fire Department ambulances, according to a city lawyer. The department also has been criticized by the city's top budget officials for going over its budget by millions of dollars.

On Tuesday morning, The Times reported on a YouTube video titled "Firehouse Burlesque Hula Hooping" showing a woman in high-heels and tight shorts dancing with a hoop at a Venice fire station. The video was a promotion for Hoopnotica, a fitness company. The firm's chief executive said the shoot was unplanned, lasted no more than 30 minutes and that no money changed hands.

Last year, firefighters from the same Venice firehouse and another station were investigated for allowing fire engines to be used in porn shoots. Shortly after those videos surfaced, the controversy spread to Cummings when the chief acknowledged that he once posed for racy photos with a bikini-clad woman when he was stationed in Venice as a captain.

Cummings said the department was investigating the hula hoop video. Councilman Mitchell Englander, who chairs the council's Public Safety Committee, said firehouse antics are "another part of the culture we have to change."

At the council meeting, Cummings and other fire officials reviewed the recent findings of a task force formed to examine the department's various data management troubles.

Councilman Eric Garcetti said he was happy the data problems were being addressed, but said he wanted a detailed plan for service improvements.

He also said the department needs stronger leadership. "I want somebody fighting for this department," he said. "Talk to your firefighters out there. They don't feel that is happening."

After the economic downturn, the council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cut the LAFD's annual budget by $88 million — from $561 million in 2008 to $473 million in 2011.

The cuts led to service "brownouts," which took units out of service on a rotating basis, and which were eventually replaced by a new deployment plan. Cummings, an assistant chief at the time who oversaw development of the redeployment, predicted response times would match pre-recession levels following the changes. But investigations by The Times and City Controller Wendy Greuel found response times for medical emergencies have increased over the last four years.

Councilman Richard Alarcon admonished his colleagues, saying they should have known their budget cuts would lead to slower response times.

"Even Barry Bonds can't hit home runs with a plastic bat," said Alarcon, who voted against the cuts.

This spring, responding to concerns about the department's performance and the controversy over the accuracy of its data, lawmakers added back $40 million to the department budget. Cummings has requested an additional $50 million in next year's budget.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

ben.welsh@latimes.com

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U.S. Commandos' New Landlord in Afghanistan: Blackwater

U.S. Special Operations Forces have a brand new home in Afghanistan. It’s owned and operated by the security company formerly known as Blackwater, thanks to a no-bid deal worth $22 million.

You might think that Blackwater, now called Academi, was banished into some bureaucratic exile after its operatives in Afghanistan stole guns from U.S. weapons depots and killed Afghan civilians. Wrong. Academi’s private 10-acre compound outside Kabul, called Camp Integrity, is the new headquarters for perhaps the most important special operations unit in Afghanistan.

That would be the Special Operations Joint Task Force–Afghanistan, created on July 1 to unite and oversee the various spec-ops “tribes” throughout Afghanistan. It’s run by Army Maj. Gen. Raymond “Tony” Thomas, a former deputy commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, and is already tasked with reforming how those elite forces train Afghan villagers to fight the Taliban. And its role is only going to grow in Afghanistan, as regular U.S. forces withdraw by 2014 and the commandos take over the residual task of fighting al-Qaida and its allies. Perhaps that’s why Academi’s no-bid contract runs through May 2015.

Academi spokeswoman Kelley Gannon declined to comment for this story. But it’s highly unusual for U.S. military forces to take up official residence on a privately owned facility. Sources familiar with the arrangement, who wouldn’t speak for the record, say that Thomas’ team is already looking to move. But Camp Integrity is already shaping up to be a crucial location for an Afghanistan war that’s rapidly changing.

Peter Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who’s closely studied the private security industry, finds the spec ops’ private HQ unsurprising. “We’ve seen these kind of close, intertwined relationships in the field between the public and private forces before,” he says. “The U.S. military and the CIA, reportedly, have hired these companies to do everything from building bases, running the facilities and logistics, to serving as the guard forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan. You get to a certain point where you wonder where the U.S. military and private military roles begin and end. But to me, the interesting question is what have we actually learned from these past experiences?” (Full disclosure: Danger Room editor Noah Shachtman works with Singer at Brookings’ 21 Century Defense Initiative.)

The uber-special ops command’s birth at Camp Integrity apparently occurred for a simple, mundane reason: overcrowding.

In March, the U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees all commando units around the world, instructed a local unit in Afghanistan to prep for the creation of a new force that would encompass all American special operations forces there. The problem was, there wasn’t sufficient space at existing facilities to house the 217 additional personnel that made up the initial complement of the Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan. So it turned to Academi.

Through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which had an existing contract with Academi for operations at Camp Integrity, the commandos awarded Academi a no-bid deal worth $6.6 million in its first year. They jointly determined that “no other vendor” could have accommodated Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan by its July 1 deadline for the command’s establishment, particularly as it needed secure office space. A deal was reached with Academi for use of Camp Integrity on May 15.

“Meeting the deadline of May 15, 2012 was vital for U.S. national security interests and organic Afghan capabilities of local security and governance,” according to an announcement of the basing deal quietly released this week — over six months after Academi began moving the command into its privately-owned home. Without explanation, the contract further states that failing to set up the new special-ops command on time could have jeopardized the U.S. troop drawdown, thereby imposing “insurmountable costs” for keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan longer.

Academi’s contract for providing the “life support services” to the task force is worth $22.3 million. If all options on the contract are exercised, it will last until May 2015 — an indication that the special operators’ counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan will continue after most U.S. forces come home after 2014. Last month, Gen. Joseph Dunford, President Obama’s nominee to take over command of the war, said “counterterrorism” would be among the missions of a post-2014 force.

U.S. and Afghan negotiators recently began discussions over the scope of that residual presence, and a big factor in that debate will concern which Afghan bases will host American troops. But it’s less clear what authority U.S. diplomats and Afghan bureaucrats have over a privately-owned base like Camp Integrity, although Academi’s operations are already certified by Afghan authorities.

Academi won’t talk much about Camp Integrity. A spokesman, John Procter, told Danger Room in March that it contains a “24/7 operations center, fueling stations, vehicle maintenance facility, lodging, office and conference space and a fortified armory.” His colleague Gannon declined to elaborate for this story. According to its contract, Academi will provide everything from food to tech support to “armed security services” for the mega-spec ops command at Camp Integrity.

But the commandos won’t be the only U.S. military tenants at Camp Integrity. A Pentagon agency called the Counter-Narcoterrorism Program Office also uses Camp Integrity as a base of operations to aid in its war on Afghanistan’s drug lords. Academi provides the office’s small Kabul cell with, among other things, “a secure armory and weapons maintenance service.”

Academi’s old incarnation, Blackwater, had deep ties to the secretive U.S. special operations community. Founder Erik Prince was a Navy SEAL, and the firm aided the Joint Special Operations Command with counterterrorism targeting and “snatch and grab” operations in Pakistan. But while the new ownership of the rebranded Academi has previously emphasized its differences with the old Blackwater regime, some continuities are on display — like how the military’s newly expanded spy service will rely on Academi for self-defense training.

An informed source inside the special operations community says there’s already a plan in the works to move Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan out of Camp Integrity, but the source declined to elaborate. For the time being, the heart of the enduring commando mission in the U.S.’ longest war can be found at the headquarters of its most infamous private security company.

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Hugh Hefner heads to altar again, with “runaway bride”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is headed to the altar again – with the blonde Playmate who ditched him five days before their planned wedding in 2011.

Hefner, 86, and his former “runaway bride” Crystal Harris, 26, obtained a marriage license in Beverly Hills on Tuesday, Los Angeles County Recorder spokeswoman Elizabeth Knox said.

Celebrity website TMZ.com said the couple, who reunited earlier this year, are planning a New Year’s Eve wedding.

Harris was Playboy magazine‘s Miss December 2009 and appeared on the July 2011 cover of the adult magazine with a “runaway bride” sticker covering her bottom half.

In what was described at the time only as a “change of heart,” Harris dumped the magazine mogul and left his Playboy Mansion five days before a lavish June 2011 wedding before 300 guests.

This time around, the couple are playing it low-key, staying mum on their busy Twitter accounts with Hefner’s spokeswoman declining to confirm or deny their plans.

Hefner, founder of the Playboy adult entertainment empire, has been married twice before. He and his second wife Kimberley Conrad, also a former Playmate, divorced in 2010 after a lengthy separation. His first marriage to Mildred Williams ended in divorce in 1959. He has two children from each marriage.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Recipes for Health: Mediterranean Lentil Purée — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

The spicing here is the same as one used in a popular Egyptian lentil salad. The dish is inspired by a lentil purée that accompanies bread at Terra Bistro in Vail, Colo.

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large garlic clove, minced or pureed

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground coriander seeds

1/8 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom seeds

1/4 teaspoon ground fenugreek seeds

3/4 cup brown or green lentils, washed and picked over

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 tablespoon plain low-fat yogurt (more to taste) or additional liquid from the lentils for a vegan version

Chopped cilantro for garnish (optional)

1. Combine 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and the garlic in a small frying pan or saucepan over medium heat. When the garlic begins to sizzle, add the spices. Stir together for about 30 seconds, then remove from the heat and set aside.

2. Place the lentils in a medium saucepan, cover by 1 to 2 inches with water, add a bay leaf, and bring to a boil. Add salt to taste, reduce the heat and cook until tender, 40 to 50 minutes. Remove the bay leaf. Taste and adjust salt. Place a strainer over a bowl and drain the lentils. Transfer to a food processor fitted with the steel blade.

3. Purée the lentils along with the garlic and spices. With the machine running add the additional olive oil and the garlic. Thin out as desired with the broth from the lentils. The purée should be very smooth; if it is dry or pasty, add more yogurt, broth, or olive oil. Taste and adjust salt. If desired add a few drops of lemon juice. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle the cilantro over the top if desired, or spread directly on croutons or pita triangles.

Advance preparation: This will keep for four days in the refrigerator. You will probably need to moisten it with additional yogurt, olive oil or broth, and you may want to warm it and drizzle on a little more olive oil before serving.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 31 calories; 2 grams fat; 0 grams saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 0 milligrams cholesterol; 3 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 1 milligram sodium (does not include salt to taste); 1 gram protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports to Reopen After Strike

LOS ANGELES — After an eight-day strike that crippled the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, clerical workers from a local office of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union on Tuesday night agreed to a new contract with the terminal operators at the ports. Union members will return to work Wednesday morning.

As the strike dragged into its second week, both sides had come under increasing pressure from local officials to end the dispute, which had threatened to derail the Southern California economy during the holiday season. Officials from the Port of Long Beach estimated that $650 million in trade has been idled each day of the strike and a federal mediator arrived on Tuesday to help broker a deal.

“I am pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached between labor and management that will bring to an end the eight-day strike that has cost our local economy billions of dollars,” Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement released Tuesday night. “With the strike now ending, we must waste no time in getting the nation’s busiest port complex’s operations back up to speed.”

Although only about 600 clerical workers had been participating in the strike, they managed to shut down 10 of the 14 shipping container terminals at the two ports, because thousands of longshoremen from the union would not cross the picket lines.

“This victory was accomplished because of support from the entire family of 10,000 members” of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the harbor community, Robert McEllrath, the president of the union, said in a statement announcing the agreement.

Neither the union nor the terminal operators offered details of the new contract agreement on Tuesday night.

Steve Getzug, a spokesman for the Harbor Employers Association, which represents the terminal operators, said the union voted on the proposal from the employers on Tuesday shortly before the federal mediator arrived. He added that the deal included “some compromise on staffing issues that were important to the employers.”

“And, importantly, a deal has been reached,” Mr. Getzug said. “The longshoremen expected to return 7 a.m., ready to get the cargo moving again.”

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No word from Supreme Court on gay marriage cases

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices are not exactly facing the "fiscal cliff," but they will be under more pressure this week to decide which gay marriage cases they will rule on this term.

They discussed the pending appeals at their private conference on Friday, but announced no decisions. The justices will try again at their weekly conference this Friday, the last such meeting before the long holiday recess.

It is not uncommon for the justices to discuss an appeal for two or more weeks before voting to grant it. The gay marriage question is complicated because there are 10 pending appeals, including a defense of California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage.

Eight of the appeals ask the court to rule on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal benefits to legally married gay couples. Judges in New England, New York and California have declared this provision unconstitutional because it denies gays and lesbians equal protection of the laws.

The Supreme Court has a duty to rule when a major federal law has been struck down in one part of the nation. But it is not clear which case the court should decide.

The first ruling on the issue arose when Nancy Gill, a postal worker from Massachusetts, sued because she could not include her female spouse on her healthcare plan. She won, but Justice Elena Kagan may be forced to sit out that case because she worked on it as solicitor general, potentially setting up a 4-4 tie.

In October, Solicitor Gen. Donald Verrilli Jr. advised the court that the New York case of Edith Windsor "now provides the most appropriate vehicle" for deciding the constitutional question. It was filed after Kagan had stepped aside from the Justice Department.

Windsor and her partner, Thea Spyer, lived together for more than 40 years and married in Canada in 2007. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her estate to Windsor, but the Internal Revenue Service assessed Windsor $363,000 in estate taxes, saying she did not qualify as a "surviving spouse."

But because Windsor and Spyer were married in Canada, they may not serve as the proper stand-ins for the other plaintiffs who were legally married in one of the states.

Massachusetts has raised a third complication. State Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley filed a separate appeal and urged the court to decide the issue on states' rights grounds. Since marriage has always been a matter of state law, she argued, the Defense of Marriage Act violates the 10th Amendment, which protects the powers of the states.

If the court sees a problem with the Gill or Windsor cases, it could opt to decide similar cases involving federal benefits brought by same-sex couples from Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and California.

Once the justices decide which of the Defense of Marriage Act cases to hear, they must decide whether to go further and rule on California's Proposition 8 and the potentially broader issue of the right to marry for gay couples. If the court votes to hear the case, the justices will decide by next summer on whether the state's ban on gay marriage violates the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

If the court turns down the appeal, it will clear the way for gay marriages to resume in California, but without setting a national precedent.

In addition, Arizona has asked the court to revive a state measure that denies benefits to the domestic partners of state employees — a case known as Brewer vs. Diaz.

The court's recent practice has been to announce on Friday afternoon which cases have been granted a review, and to announce on Monday the appeals that were turned down.

david.savage@latimes.com

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A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 4

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

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Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin, Don Cheadle Sign on for James Cameron’s Climate-Change Doc

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – James Cameron‘s climate-change documentary “Years of Living Dangerously” has lined up some high-level talent to get its message across. Matt Damon, Alec Baldwin and Don Cheadle have signed on to narrate the documentary, Showtime – which will air the project over multiple episodes next year – said Monday.

Actor Edward Norton is also expected to come aboard, Showtime said, with additional talent to be announced.

As previously reported exclusively by TheWrap, Cameron is teaming with producer and noted philanthropist Jerry Weintraub on the project, which will report on first-person accounts of people who’ve been affected by global warming. Cameron and Weintraub will executive “Years of Living Dangerously,” along with Arnold Schwarzenegger.la

“60 Minutes” producers Joel Bach and David Gelber are also executive-producing, along with climate expert Daniel Abbasi.

“The recent devastation on the East Coast is a tragic reminder of the direct link between our daily lives and climate change,” Showtime Networks’ president of entertainment David Nevins said. “This series presents a unique opportunity to combine the large-scale filmmaking styles of James Cameron, Jerry Weintraub and Arnold Schwarzenegger – arguably some of Hollywood’s biggest movie makers – with the hard-hitting, intimate journalism of ’60 Minutes’ veterans Joel Bach and David Gelber. I believe this combination will make for a thought-provoking television event.”

“We’ll make it exciting,” added Cameron. “We’ll make it investigative. We’ll bring people the truth. And people are always hungry for the truth.”

In addition to the narrators, “Years of Living Dangerously” will use reporting from the field, with New York Times journalists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, columnist Mark Bittman and MSNBC host Chris Hayes.

“Years of Living Dangerously” will air over six to eight one-hour episodes, Showtime said.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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With Some Hospitals Closed After Hurricane Sandy, Others Pick Up Slack

A month after Hurricane Sandy struck New York City, unexpectedly shutting down several hospitals, one Upper East Side medical center had so many more emergency room patients than usual that it was parking them in its lobby.

White and blue plastic screens had been set up between the front door and the elevator banks in the East 68th Street building of that hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell. The screens shielded 10 gurneys and an improvised nursing station from the view of people obliviously walking in and out of the soaring, light-filled atrium.

“It’s like a World War II ward,” Teri Daniels, who had been waiting a day and a half with a relative who needed to be admitted, said last week.

Since the storm, a number of New York City hospitals have been scrambling to deal with a sharp increase in patients, forcing them to add shifts of doctors and nurses on overtime, to convert offices and lobbies to use for patients’ care, and even, in one case, to go to a local furniture store to buy extra beds.

At Beth Israel Medical Center, 11 blocks south of the Bellevue Hospital Center emergency room, which was shuttered because of storm damage, the average number of visits to the E.R. per day has risen to record levels. Visits have increased by 24 percent this November compared with last, and the numbers show no sign of dropping. Hospital admissions have risen 12 percent compared with last November.

Most of the rise in volume is from patients who had never been to Beth Israel before. An emergency room doctor at the hospital described treating one patient who said he had been born at Bellevue and had never before gone anywhere else.

Emergency room visits have gone up 25 percent at NewYork-Presybterian/Weill Cornell, which in Bellevue’s absence is the closest high-level trauma center — treating stab wounds, gun wounds, people hit by cars and the like — in Manhattan from 68th Street south. Stretchers holding patients have been lined up like train cars around the nursing station and double-parked in front of stretcher bays.

In Brooklyn, some patients in Maimonides Medical Center’s emergency room who need to be admitted are waiting two or three days for a bed upstairs, instead of four or five hours. Almost every one of the additional 1,100 emergency patients this November compared with last November came from four ZIP codes affected by the storm and served by Coney Island Hospital, a public hospital that was closed because of storm damage.

The number of psychiatric emergency patients from those same ZIP codes has tripled, in a surge that began three days before the hurricane, perhaps fueled by anxiety, as well as by displacement from flooded adult homes or programs at Coney Island Hospital, doctors said.

The Maimonides psychiatric emergency room bought five captain’s beds — which do not have railings that can be used for suicide attempts — at a local furniture store, to accommodate extra patients. The regular emergency room had to buy 27 new stretchers after the hurricane, “and we probably need a few more,” the department’s chief, Dr. John Marshall, said.

The emergency room and inpatient operations of four hospitals remain closed because of flooding and storm damage. Besides Bellevue and Coney Island, NYU Langone Medical Center and the VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, both near Bellevue on the East Side of Manhattan, are closed.

While the surge in traffic to other hospitals has been a burden, it has also been a boon, bringing more revenue.

On the Upper East Side, the storm has helped Lenox Hill Hospital, which has a history of financial problems. It took two or three wards that had been turned into offices and converted them back to space for patients. Emergency room visits are up 10 percent, and surgery has been expanded to seven days a week from five.

“We usually operate at slightly over 300 beds, and now we’re at well over 550,” Carleigh Gustafson, director of emergency nursing, said.

Conversely, administrators at the shuttered hospitals, especially NYU Langone, a major teaching center, worry that their patients and doctors are being raided, with some never to return.

NYU’s salaried doctors are being paid through January, on the condition that they do not take another job. But at the same time, they need a place to practice, so NYU administrators have been arranging for them to work as far away as New Jersey until the hospital reopens. Lenox Hill alone has taken on close to 300 NYU doctors, about 600 nurses, and about 150 doctors in training, fellows and medical students.

Obstetricians and surgeons from the closed hospitals have been particularly disadvantaged, since they are dependent on hospitals to treat their patients. Many displaced surgeons have been reduced to treating only the most desperately ill, and operating on nights and weekends, when hospitals tend to be least well staffed.

“I think there’s no question that a lot of people have postponed anything that they can postpone that is elective,” said Dr. Andrew W. Brotman, senior vice president at NYU.

In mid-November, Dr. Michael L. Brodman, chairman of obstetrics at Mount Sinai Medical Center, sent out a memo saying his department had taken on 26 NYU physicians, as well as nurses and residents, but “clearly, that is too much for us to handle long term.”

Since then, 15 of the physicians have gone to New York Downtown Hospital, while Mount Sinai has retained 11 doctors and 26 nurses.

“We are guests in other people’s homes,” Dr. Brotman of NYU said, “and we are guests who have to some degree overstayed their welcome.”

Joanna Walters contributed reporting.

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Terms of Greek Bond Buyback Top Expectations

LONDON — In a bold bid to reduce its debt burden, Greece offered on Monday to spend as much as 10 billion euros to buy back 30 billion euros of its bonds from investors and banks.

While the buyback had been expected, the prices offered by the government were above what the market had forecast, with a minimum price of 30 euro cents and a maximum of 40 cents, for a discount of 60 percent to 70 percent.

Analysts said they expected that the average price would ultimately be 32 to 34 euro cents, a premium of about 4 cents above where the bonds traded at the end of last week.

Pierre Moscovici, the French finance minister, played down concerns that the Greek debt buyback might not go as planned.

“I have no particular anxiety about this,” Mr. Moscovici said Monday at the European Parliament ahead of the meeting in Brussels of euro zone finance ministers to discuss Greece. “It just has to be very quick.”

A successful buyback is critical for Greece. The International Monetary Fund has said that it will lend more money to Greece only if it is reasonably able to show that it is on target to achieve a ratio of debt to annual gross domestic product of less than 110 percent by 2022.

Greece will have at its disposal 10 billion euros, or $13 billion, in borrowed money from Europe. Investors who agree to trade in their Greek bonds will receive six-month treasury bills issued by Europe’s rescue vehicle, the European Financial Stability Facility. The offer will close Friday.

If successful, the exchange will retire about half of Greece’s 62 billion euros in debt owed to the private sector. The country still owes about 200 billion euros to European governments and the I.M.F.

Analysts said that Greek, Cypriot and other government-controlled European banks, which have as much as 20 billion euros worth of bonds, were expected to agree to the deal at a price in the low 30s. That would mean that to complete the transaction, hedge-fund holdings of 8 billion to 10 billion euros in bonds would have to be tendered at a price below 35 cents. Any higher price would mean that Greece would have to ask its European creditors for extra money — an unlikely outcome at this stage.

Even though Greece is so close to bankruptcy, its bonds have become one of the hot investments in Europe. Large hedge funds, like Third Point and Brevan Howard, have accumulated significant stakes, starting this summer when the bonds were trading in the low teens. Shorter-term traders have been snapping up bonds at around 29 cents to make a quick profit by participating in the buyback.

In a research note published Monday, analysts at Nomura in London said it was “reasonable and likely” that enough hedge funds — especially those that might be more risk-averse and or have a shorter perspective — would agree to the deal at a price below 35 cents.

But there are also foreign investors looking to the longer term who may decide to hold onto most of their holdings in the hope that the bonds rally even more after a successful buyback.

“I think the bonds could go to as high as 40 cents in a nonexit scenario,” said Gabriel Sterne, an analyst at Exotix in London, referring to the consensus view that Greece will not leave the euro zone anytime soon.

Bondholders were encouraged by comments from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, reported in the German news media over the weekend, that raised the possibility that European governments might offer Greece debt relief in the future. A number of bondholders expect Greek bond yields to trade more in line with those of Portugal in the coming years, but without the prospect of a future buyback to push up the prices of Greek government bonds, the risk to such an approach is substantial.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the group of finance ministers whose countries use the euro, told a news conference late Monday in Brussels that ministers would meet again on the morning of Dec. 13 to make a final decision on aid disbursement to Greece.

Mr. Juncker said he was confident that Greece would receive its money on that date, but he declined to comment on the prospects for success of the buyback program because it was a sensitive matter for the financial markets.

Mr. Juncker has been the president of the group of ministers since 2005, and the post gives him significant power over what is discussed at the group’s meetings.

Mr. Juncker reiterated at the news conference that he would step down at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year. But he declined to signal his preference for any particular successor.

“I don’t have to endorse anyone,” Mr. Juncker said. “I was asking my colleagues to provide for my succession,” he said, referring to discussions held with ministers earlier in the evening.

Separately, Spain, which is also seeking to overcome crippling debt problems, began the process Monday of formally requesting 39.5 billion euros in emergency aid to recapitalize its banks. It also announced that a tax amnesty had yielded only 1.2 billion euros, less than half what the government had expected.

The request for emergency aid was being sent to authorities managing the euro zone bailout funds, according to Spanish officials, who added that no further approval would be needed from ministers meeting in Brussels.

The request follows the European Commission’s approval last week of a plan to make the granting of the aid conditional on thousands of layoffs and office closings at four Spanish banks: Bankia, Catalunya Banc, NCG Banco and Banco de Valencia.

James Kanter contributed reporting from Brussels.

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