Alpha Bank, Greek`s second largest bank, will accept help from a 28-billion-euro (35-million-dollar) support scheme to help banks thrugh the financial crisis, its chairman said on Sunday.

`Our bank will join the plan, making use of all the measures made available by the Greek state,` Alpha Bank chairman Yiannis Costopoulos told Kathimerini daily in an interview.

`We take the initiative to be the first to join...hoping to create a positive dynamic among (other) banks,` he said.

Alpha Bank, which has a network of 865 branches including over 400 in the Balkans, Cyprus and Ukraine, thus becomes the first major Greek lender to enter the scheme since it was set up a month ago.

The government on October 15 unveiled the support package to help the Greek banking sector get through the financial crisis.

Until Sunday`s announcement however, none of the major Greek banks had signed up. The scheme requires them to accept a state representative with veto powers on executives` bonuses and salaries on to their management board.

Their reticence has already led Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis to issue repeated warnings.

`Participation in the programme is voluntary but nobody has the right to make society shoulder the repercussions of one`s decisions,` Karamanlis said at the end of an EU summit in Brussels last week.

The plan enables the state to purchase up to five billion euros in preferred shares in cash-strapped banks; and to provide up to 15 billion euros to guarantee bank loans.

It also allows the state to issue bonds worth up to eight billion euros to encourage loans to small businesses and house buyers.

The support package has remained optional as Greek banks are not in immediate trouble.

`Greek banks were not exposed to `toxic` products,` Costopoulos said on Sunday.

`Our problem is that we will have a shortage of capital compared to what our European competitors will have tomorrow because they received state support.`

The finance ministry said its scheme was partly designed to shield them from unfair competition at home and abroad as other countries had taken similar measures.