Draghi reiterates that ECB cannot buy Greek bonds

ROME (Reuters) - European Central Bank President Mario Draghi reiterated on Thursday that the bank cannot buy Greek sovereign bonds as part of its quantitative easing bond-buying programme to help the euro zone economy.

"QE does not buy Greek bonds for three reasons. The first is that it doesn't buy bonds of countries that are in a programme with the IMF and the European Commission when the review of this programme has not been completed. As you know, in Greece the review was suspended," Draghi told Italian lawmakers.

Draghi said the other reasons for not buying Greek bonds were that their credit rating was too low and that the ECB could not buy bonds from a country above a certain percentage - to avoid "arriving at a point where it becomes a country's biggest creditor".

(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte and Isla Binnie, writing by Gavin Jones)