Antenna: News in English, 99-03-22

Antenna News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article

From: Antenna <www.antenna.gr/> - email: webmaster@antenna.gr

CONTENTS

[01] Kosovo-Holbrooke

[02] Simitis re-elected President of PASOK

[03] PASOK

[04] New Democracy

[01] Kosovo-Holbrooke

There was little hope in Western diplomatic circles that Milosevic would agree to withdraw his forces from Kosovo and sign a Nato-borkered deal designed to reconcile the Serbs and the ethnic Albanian in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

And on the ground in Kosovo there was perhaps even less hope that a settlement would be reached.

With Nato's powerful military machine waiting to pound the Serbs, battles raged throughout the province between the Serbian police and troops on the one side, and the secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army on the other.

Antenna's Nicholas Vafiades was with Serbian forces who lost two men in a battle with rebels.

While Holbrooke and Milosevic talked, the situation deteriorated steadily in Kosovo.

Belgrade agreed last week to all the terms of the Nato deal, which includes autonomy for Kosovo - but as of Monday night, the Serbs had not accepted Nato's demand that alliance forces be deployed in Kosovo to police the peace.

The Serb forces in Kosovo told Vafiades Monday that they are determined not to surrender sovereignty over Kosovo, which they hold dear as the land of their forefathers.

[02] Simitis re-elected President of PASOK

The congress ended pretty much the way Kostas Simitis and his cabinet members expected it to: with a re-affirmation of his leadership.

The prime minister stood alone in the Pasok leadership balloting. 65.7 per cent of the 5666 voting delegates chose him to head the party.

The rest of the ballots were blank or invalid.

It wasn't quite the percentage the prime minister and the rest of Pasok's modernisers were hoping for, but it did nicely, thanks very much.

Especially considering the doldrums the government had found itself in just several weeks ago, in the wake of the arrest of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan after leaving the Greek ambassador's residence in Kenya.

Loudly cheered and applauded by the delegates after his victory, Kostas Simitis, his voice hoarse from a weekend of speeches, reiterated the message he'd been hammering home to the party all weekend: unity.

Saying that Pasok will now move forward in unity to achieve its goals, the prime minister thanked all the delegates - whether they had voted for him or not - for attending the congress and contributing to the exchange of views and ideas.

For Simitis and his supporters, the prime minister's staying power, rooted in his single- minded commitment to ensuring Greece meets the economic criteria for joining Europe's single currency, has been borne out once again.

Addressing the congress delegates over the weekend, the prime minister said Pasok has as many lives as a cat.

No one doubts that Simitis has bounced back. What the party - especially Pasok's dissenters - are waiting to see is whether Pasok can also bounce back from low poll ratings and turn in a positive performance in this June's European elections.

[03] PASOK

Pasok's fifth congress will not go down in the history books as the place where opponents of Kostas Simitis's belt-tightening economic policies and what some see as a foreign policy too pragmatic and not patriotic enough fought things out.

The prime minister's view that his austere economic policies have taken the country to the threshold of the promised land of the single European currency has won widespread acceptance.

And his critics' fire over the Ocalan debacle have fallen short of their target; Kostas Simitis and top cabinet members repeatedly laid the blame for the Ocalan affair at the feet of the private individuals who had smuggled the Kurdish leader into Greece in January.

But though the opponents of Simitis's modernising policies have been marginalised politically, their numbers remain - at least on the roll call of Pasok's central committee.

The weekend congress elected 180 people to the committee. And what gave an otherwise jubilant government camp pause for thought was the fact that 70 of the 73 candidates backed by dissidents were elected to the party's supreme policy-forming body.

In addition, defence minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos, a staunch traditionalist who represents the voice of dissent within Pasok, came in first in the central committee balloting. His 3,230 votes put him well ahead of the second-place finisher, foreign minister Giorgos Papandreou.

But none of that is of too much concern for the modernisers, which, with 110 people elected to the central committee, have a majority on that body.

Indeed, while Tsochatzpoulos finished first, the rest of the top ten finishers are all people who firmly back Simitis. After the foreign minister, there was development minister Evangelos Venizelos, Pasok secretary Kostas Skandalides, environment minister Kostas Laliotis, former foreign minister Theodoros Pangalos, Paraskevas Avgerinos, former interior minister Alekos Papadopoulos, parliament president Apostolos Kaklamanis, and interior minister Vaso Papandreou.

Beyond the numbers from the weekend elections, what remains is that Kostas Simitis and the policies he represents remain in firm control of Pasok.

[04] New Democracy

New Democracy leader Kostas Karamanlis discussed the results of the Pasok congress with top members of his party Monday.

New Democracy spokesman Aris Spiliotopoulos says Pasok cannot meet the needs of politics and society today. Pasok is true to what he calls its dividing lines, and is therefore ill-equpped to lead the country into the next century.

Former prime minister Constantinos Mitsotakis says Kostas Simitis may have succeeded in being re-elected Pasok leader, but with a majority smaller than Simitis had anticipated. Pasok, predicts Mitsotakis, will lose the Euro elections.

But that doesn't mean that New Democracy can be complacent, adds the honorary president of New Democracy. Mitsotakis says that his party must improve on its 32.6 per cent showing in the last European elections if it hopes to change the political landscape.

New Democracy MP Dora Bakoyianni is also confident of Pasok defeat in June. She says the prime minister's authority was questioned by the one third of the Pasok congress delegates who didn't vote to see him stay on as party leader; and, adds Bakoyianni, the prime minister's authority will also be questioned by Greek voters in the European elections.

(c) Antenna 1999

Antenna News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article