Athens News Agency: News in English (PM), 99-04-28

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr>

NEWS IN ENGLISH

Athens, Greece, 28/04/1999 (ANA)

MAIN HEADLINES

• Papandreou travels to Moscow today for talks on Yugoslav crisis
• Swedish royals wind up official leg of visit to Greece
• Woman dead in hotel bomb attack - Political parties' condemnation
• Bomb planted under journalist's car defused
• Eurobank share capital increase
• Weather
• Foreign exchange

NEWS IN DETAIL

Foreign Minister George Papandreou travels to Moscow, today where important diplomatic efforts to resolve the Yugoslav crisis are expected to take place.

Mr. Papandreou will hold talks with his Russian counterpart Igor Ivanov and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who will be in Moscow at the same time.

The Greek foreign minister will also have talks with Russia's special envoy on the Yugoslav crisis Viktor Chernomyrdin.

Government spokesman Dimitris Reppas said yesterday the Greek government was keeping open a channel of communication with Moscow "in order to coordinate activities backing efforts aimed at finding a political solution to the Yugoslav crisis".

Swedish royals wind up official leg of visit to Greece

Sweden's royal couple yesterday wound up the official leg of its visit to Greece after a lunch with Prime Minister Costas Simitis, meetings with political party leaders and a visit to the Swedish Archaelogical Institute in Athens. In a brief conversa tion with reporters, King Carl XVI Gustaf said Mr. Simitis had explained in detail the dramatic situation in the Balkans, and that he under-stood Greece's difficult position.

He said he and Queen Sylvia had watched the anti-war concert in the capital's Syntagma Square from the balcony of their Grande Bretagne Hotel on Monday night, and expressed a wish that peace would soon come to Yugoslavia.

"Such crises with mass refugee movements concern us all. In Sweden, the media make frequent references to the war, but in Greece, due to the proximity to Yugoslavia, things are different," he said.

At a ceremony at Athens City Hall, mayor Dimitris Avramopoulos awarded the King the Golden Medal of Valour and the Key to the City of Athens.

Woman dead in hotel bomb attack - Political parties' condemnation

A three-day conference organised by the Economist opens this evening in Athens as planned despite a bomb attack on the venue shortly before midnight last night in which one woman was killed and another person was injured.

"The conference will go on as planned, and beefed up security measures have been taken in a radius of six kilometres" around the central Athenaeum Intercontinental Hotel, a spokeswoman for the organisers told ANA.

She also said there had been no cancellations among the prominent Greek and foreign guest speakers and delegates to the 3rd Round Table with the Government of Greece on "Globalisation: The Challenge for Greece & Europe" organised by the Economist Conferences of Greece and Cyprus.

A home-made explosive device went off on the lawn outside the hotel late last, fatally injuring 39-year-old Virginia Constantinou, and injuring Ioannis Kanavas, 28, both employees of Altec informations systems company who were installing computers and other equipment for the conference.

An anomymous caller, saying he represented the Revolutionary Cells group phoned two newspapers and a private television station 20 minutes before the explosion, warning them about the bomb.

The terrorist group, which first emerged in late 1996, has in the past claimed seven other attacks, including bombs against former public order minister Stelios Papathemelis in September 1997, the headquarters of former Supreme Court president Vassilis Kokkinos' party Pan-National Democratic Union in November 1997, and on American Express Bank and Barclays Bank branches in Piraeus in December 1998.

In a proclamation titled "50 Years of NATO: half a centurey of massacres of peoples and razing of societies - Bombs make the world go round" sent to a private Athens daily (Athinaiki), the group said the bomb was in protest against the US-led NATO bombings of Yugoslavia, the intervention in the Gulf "which deprived the entire Middle East of peace and prosperity", and US "imperialism and its EU subordinates" and NATO policy in general

Constantinou was fatally injured by glass shards which fell on her and Kanavas when the explosion shattered the hotel's glass front entrance and died en route to hospital. Kanavas was reported out of danger after being operated on.

Speakers at the conference include European Commission vice-president Sir Leon Brittan, Greece's foreign minister George Papandreou, national defence minister Akis Tsohatzopoulos, national economy and finance minister Yannos Papantoniou, transport and communications minister Tasos Mantelis, environment and public works minister Costas Laliotis, Athens Mayor Dimitris Avramopoulos, Albanian deputy prime minister Ilir Meta, Romanian minister of industry and trade Radu Berceanu, Merrill Lynch UK managing director Paul Raphael, European Investment Bank president Sir Brian Unwin, former Deutsche Bundesbank president Helmut Schlesinger, NATO assistant secretary general for defence planning and operations Anthony Craig, and US Ambassador in Athens Nicholas Burns.

Prime Minister Costas Simitis today condemned last night's bomb attack, adding that the government would do its duty, and called on the Greek people to resist and condemn such phenomena which were counter to the country's interests.

Addressing a meeting of his ruling PASOK party's parliamentary group, Simitis said that "those who use such methods maintain that they supposedly condemn violence, but they use blind violence or kill innocent citizens, and the bottom line is that they use violence as a means of destabilising the country's political life and democratic form of government".

He said perpetrators of such actions "harm the Greek people, the country's interests, the economy and tourism, aspiring to more tension and a climate of blind hate", adding that "such practices, however, do not stop the bombings against Yugoslavia".

The main opposition New Democracy party (ND) and Coalition of the Left and Progress (SYN) today condemned the attack.

"We express our abhorrence over yesterday's blind terrorist hit, which had human victims," ND press spokesman Aris Spiliotopoulos said.

"We reiterate or complete support for every action of the police authorities in effectively tackling terrorism. It is necessary, with the common effort of all of us, to permanently neutralise the criminal action of terrorists, which marm the country's interests," he added.

A SYN announcement said such acts of blind violence killed unsuspecting citizens, undermined the institutions, cultivated a climate of insecurity and put the country in a difficult position.

It also expressed concern over "the police authorities' delay in evacuating the premices" and called for an immediate investigation.

Late last night, government spokesman Dimitris Reppas condemned the attack, saying the target had been "the institutions and social development" while the perpetrators' aim was to "impose their views through barbaric methods".

Bomb planted under journalist's car defused

Police bomb disposal experts defused a home-made explosive device planted under the car of an Athens journalist and newspaper publisher at dawn today.

The bomb, comprising two sticks of dynamite, was planted inside a stuffed teddy bear that was hooked up to a detonator and placed under the car of George Trangas, publisher of the afternoon daily Vradyni.

Trangas spotted the device under his car as he went to pick it up from the newspaper's parking lot in the downtown Athens district of Kato Patissia and immediately alerted police.

Police used a sniffer dog to locate the bomb, which they detonated under controlled conditions.

Eurobank share capital increase

The period for exercising the right of preference for participation in the EFG Eurobank's share capital increase by 110 billion drachmas will start on May 18.

The increase in Eurobank's share capital, according to a decision by its general assembly of shareholders, will be carried out with the issue of 22, 092,725 new ordinary nominal shares, each having a face value of 500 drachmas.

The new shares will be provided for all investors who were shareholders of the bank until April 30. One new share will be provided for every five old ones, while the sale price has been set at 5,000 drachmas for each share. The EFG Eurobank's shares will be negotiated at the Athens Stock Exchange as of May 3, without the right of participation in the increase.

All branch offices of Eurobank and the National Bank of Greece will participate in the process of the right of preference in the share capital increase which will last until June 18.

WEATHER

FOREIGN EXCHANGE

Wednesday's rates (buying)
U.S. dollar          305.318
Pound sterling       490.306
Japanese yen (100)   253.992
French franc          49.409
German mark          165.708
Italian lira (100)    16.738
Irish Punt           411.517
Belgian franc          8.034
Luxembourg franc       8.034
Finnish mark          54.509
Dutch guilder        147.069
Danish kr.            43.610
Austrian sch.         23.553
Spanish peseta         1.948
Swedish kr.           36.402
Norwegian kr.         39.236
Swiss franc          202.482
Port. Escudo           1.617
Aus. dollar          197.919
Can. dollar          205.284
Cyprus pound         559.488
Euro                 324.096

(L.G.)

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