Athens News Agency: News in English, 07-09-27

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article

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

CONTENTS

[01] Dimitris Sioufas elected new President of Parliament

[02] WWF Hellas report on wildfires devastation

[01] Dimitris Sioufas elected new President of Parliament

An MP from Karditsa who served as development minister under the previous government, Sioufas was the candidate nominated by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis for the parliament presidency.

Outlining his plans during his term in the third-highest office in Greece after the President of the Republic and the prime minister, Sioufas said he intended to introduce changes to Parliament regulations that would allow visiting heads of state and government and other distinguished foreigners to directly address the Greek Parliament.

He also outlined plans to further upgrade the annual Youth Parliament and to begin planning for the creation of a new and modern Parliament building equipped with necessary infrastructure at another location.

The former minister also emphasised the Parliamentary diplomacy would be among his priorities and referred to the destruction wrought by the mega-fires that swept Greece in August, saying that the "Parliament of the Hellenes will be creatively present" in efforts for the recovery of these areas.

There followed a hand-over ceremony, in which Sioufas took over from his predecessor Anna Psarouda-Benaki and stressed that, in doing so, he became "even more aware of the magnitude of my responsibilities and my mission".

"I wish to give the same assurances that I gave before the 300 MPs in Parliament that I will make every effort to live up to the trust that they placed in me, to meet the obligations that Parliament has both internally but also in Greek society, [to meet] the expectations of the citizens, because the Parliament is the centre, the nucleus of our democratic system and we must bring the centre of politics back here in Parliament," he said.

Psarouda-Benakis, on her part, expressed her satisfaction that the office of Parliament president was going to a "personality with extensive Parliamentary and political experience".

Greece's new parliament, which emerged from the September 16 general elections and was sworn in on Wednesday, convened shortly before noon on Thursday to elect the House's new president in a secret ballot.

Of the 299 MPs present, 158 voted for Sioufas, 141 cast blank ballots, while Communist Party of Greece (KKE) deputy for Lesvos St. Skopelitis was absent from the proceedings.

The parliament plenary will convene again at 6:00 Thursday afternoon to elect the House's five parliamentary vice-presidents, which are distributed among the three top parties, with the first three parliamentary vice-presidential positions going to the ruling ND party, the fourth position going to main opposition PASOK and the fifth going to the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).

On Friday, a three-day debate on the new government's policy statements begins, to be read out by Prime Minister Karamanlis, with the discussions ending at midnight Sunday, followed by a vote of confidence for the new government.

Dimitris Sioufas, a lawyer, was born in 1944 in Ellinopyrgos, Karditsa prefecture. He was first elected to parliament in 1981, and served as deputy minister of Health, Welfare and Social Insurance in the New Democracy government of Constantine Mitsotakis from August 1991 to October 1993.

In April 2000 he was elected Secretary of the ND Parliamentary Group (up to the March 2004 general elections), nominated by the then main opposition New Democracy (ND) party leader Karamanlis.

With ND's assumption of the government after the March 2004 elections, he was appointed Development minister, serving in the post from March 2004 to September 2007, just ahead of the latest general elections in which ND was re-elected to power.

In August 2007, he was awarded the Medal of Friendship of the Russian Federation by Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Since the Constitution of 1975 came into effect, those serving as parliament president were Constantine Papaconstantinou, Dimitris Papaspyrou, Ioannis Alevras, Athanasios Tsaldaris, Apostolos Kaklamanis, and Anna Psarouda-Benaki.

Caption: ANA-MPA file photograph of Greece's new Parliament President Dimitris Sioufas.

[02] WWF Hellas report on wildfires devastation

According to WWF data, a total of 177,265.4 hectares of land was burned in the Peloponese, of which 55 percent (97,518 hectares) were forestland and shrubbery, 41 percent (78,104.3 hectares) were farmland, and 1 percent (1,643.2 hectares) were roads and buildings.

Of those, the report said, more than 30,000 hectares were expanses protected under the Natura 2000 network.

The areas of exceptional ecological value most seriously ravaged by the fires were: the Kaiafa lake and forest, where 22.5 percent (757.7 hectares) of the protected expanse was burned; Olympia, where 21.3 percent (67 hectares) of the protected expanse burned; the Foloi plateau with 2,994.3 hectares (30.7 percent of the protected area); Mt. Taygetos with 8,654.2 burned hectares (16.3 percent); Mt. Parnonas with 4,506.6 hectares burned (8.1 percent); Mt. Barbas and Mt. Klokis and the Selinounda Gorge with 3,047.6 hectares burned (50.4 percent); and the Vouraikos Gorge, with 636.2 burned hectares (29.2 percent).

"The rare biodiversity of the region was harmed to a great degree. Endemic species of both flora and the fauna suffered severe damage," WWF Hellas member Panagiota Maragou said, while adding that the organisation was "not worried about what nature will do from here on, but what man will do".

She said that the remaining areas, and particularly the surviving pockets of greenery inside the burned expanses, must be protected since they will serve as the nuclei for the rebirth of the rest of the forest.

WWF Hellas president Dimitris Karavelas announced a series of actions and commitments by the ecological organisation for protection and monitoring of the forest at scientific, research, informational and legal level.

Caption: ANA-MPA file photograph taken on July 3, 2007 showing burnt trees on the slopes of Mount Parnitha after the devastating fires that ravaged the slopes of the mountain, including the protected Parnitha National Park.

Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article