Athens News Agency: News in English, 01-09-01

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

CONTENTS

[01] PASOK party congress to prepare Greece to "charge" to the future,

[02] Defence minister calls for new policy to improve the people's living

[03] Weather Forecast: Sunny on Sunday

[01] PASOK party congress to prepare Greece to "charge" to the future, Simitis says

The PASOK party congress will prepare the "charge" of our country to the future, Prime Minister Costas Simitis on Saturday said in his closing remarks to the party Central Committee meeting second and final day here in Athens.

"We want a Greece open to the world, a Greece that produces values, which has a society marked by cohesion and that frees up all that the creative forces the individual and collective action has to offer," he said.

"This is our identity, our strength, the vision we want to make a reality with our congress," he added.

"We should say so, if we believe or not in the European strategy of economic and social development, as it was formulated by the coalescence of experiences, values and priorities of 15 societies, where most are at the pinnacle of international economic and social performance or if we believe that an inward-looking or distant policy or a policy of non-entanglement," Simitis said.

"If the message we want to sent with our economic and social policy is the support or the prospects of our economy, the belief that we are relay moving toward the convergence of prosperity and the quality of life with the rest of the European Union countries, is we support the redistribution of income or if we sent messages of indecision, conflicting decision making and vagueness," he added.

The premier went on to say that the political and economic choices of the government would guarantee the best possible social solidarity and prosperity for all strata of Greek society.

[02] Defence minister calls for new policy to improve the people's living standards

A political proposal to the people, who awaits for it to improve living conditions and aid the progress of the country is needed, Defence Minister Akis Tsohatzopoulos to the meeting of the ruling PASOK Central Committee said on Saturday.

During the second day of PASOK's Central Committee meeting, Tsohatzopoulos stressed that the October party congress would not be one of conflict, but one of dialogue on ideological and political issues.

He noted that the decisions arrived at by the Central Committee and the congress on policy, would be realised after the congress.

"We do not have a problem so much of social policy, we do, however, have a problem of effective social policy. The issue is not to provide funds for those policies, rather it is the way we provide the funds and the content of the preconditions on which our policy is based," Tsohatzopoulos said.

"We have to re-conquer once again our relationship with the people so as for PASOK to recover and to win the victorious course it had to this day," he added.

"The primary role in this process is not played by the directions, but by the strategies. Those are that will lead us to a course of recovery so as to be able to overcome New Democracy, which is ahead of us, not because it can offer a reliable political proposal to the Greek people, but because we often make mistakes," he stressed.

"We can come up and realise new progressive policies, having in mind the prospect of the convergence with the forces of the political center-left and the wider (political space of) the left, in the framework of an equal relationship, as it is demanded by the interest of the great democratic political spectrum. We owe it to our history and to the land to make PASOK once again hegemonic force in the political life," he added.

Tsohatzopoulos sided with the proposal to amend the party's constitution.

Foreign Minister George Papandreou had proposed such dialogue to amend the constitution of the party a day earlier.

Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Macedonia-Thrace Minister George Paschalidis also addressed.

[03] Weather Forecast: Sunny on Sunday

Sunny weather is forecast on Sunday, with scattered cloud in the west and north that may turn to showers or storms in the northwest. Winds northwesterly, light to moderate. On the northern mainland, temperatures will range from 18C to 32C; on the rest of the mainland from 19C to 35C; and in the islands from 23C to 33C. Sunny in Athens, with temperatures between 23C and 35C. Scattered cloud in Thessaloniki, with temperatures from 21C to 31C.

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