Greek President Karolos Papoulias is due to meet the heads of Greece's three main parties in a final attempt to form a coalition and avoid fresh elections.
All three - conservative New Democracy, far-left Syriza and socialist Pasok - have failed to form a government.
Voters punished New Democracy and Pasok at last Sunday's polls for backing tough EU terms for bailing out Greece.
Polls show a new vote could sweep anti-bailout parties to power, threatening Greece's membership of the euro.
European central bankers have already begun openly discussing the possibility of Greece leaving the eurozone.
Mr Papoulias's office said the president would meet initially with New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras, Syriza's Alexis Tsipras and Pasok's Evangelos Venizelos at noon (09:00 GMT) on Sunday.
As the parties that won the most votes in last Sunday's election, they have all been allowed to try to form a government.
But none have managed to cobble together a coalition that creates a majority in Greece's 300-seat parliament.
The stumbling block appears to have been Syriza's insistence that any new government must cancel austerity measures agreed in return for EU-IMF loans worth 130bn euros ($170bn; £105bn).
Mr Papoulias, 82, will later meet individually with the leaders of the four other parties that won enough votes for parliamentary seats. They include Golden Dawn, an extreme right-wing anti-immigration group.
Creditors alarmed
The talks are expected to take place over two or three days, although in theory they could drag on until the opening of parliament on Thursday.
If they fail to produce a governing coalition - and it is widely believed they will - new elections will be scheduled for next month.
The uncertainty has alarmed Greece's international creditors, who insist the country must keep to the terms of the bailout deal if it is to continue receiving funds and avoid bankruptcy.
Several opinion polls have put Syriza - runners up to New Democracy in last Sunday's election - in first place in any future poll.Correspondents say the anti-bailout vote was shared among several small parties in the first election, but now seems to be consolidating around Syriza.
With a bonus of 50 extra parliamentary seats that winning will bring, an anti-bailout coalition led by Syriza is looking more likely.
"It is obvious that there is an effort to bring about a government that will implement the bailout. We are not participating in such a government," Syriza spokesman Panos Skourletis said on Saturday.
Mr Tsipras insists he wants to keep Greece in the euro, and says European leaders are bluffing when they threaten to eject Athens from the single currency if it reneges on bailout agreements.
However, the BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens says the message from European leaders appears uncompromising: if Greece turns its back on the bailout, the eurozone might turn its back on Greece.
Greece's socialist daily newspaper, Ethnos, warned on its Sunday front page that politicians were playing "Russian roulette" with the country's damaged economy, in its fifth year of recession.
Per Jansson, deputy head of Sweden's central bank, was quoted by Bloomberg on Friday as saying that central bankers across Europe had begun discussing the possibility of a Greek exit from the eurozone and how to handle the consequences.
"I would be very careful in speculating that it would be a painless process without complications," he said in Stockholm.
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