Athens News Agency: News in English, 07-05-18

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

CONTENTS

[01] Papandreou outlines model for governing

[02] Woman unhurt after falling under moving train

[03] Tourism & Property Show 2007 in Athens

[01] Papandreou outlines model for governing

At the same time, PASOK's leader stepped up his already intense criticism of the government and Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis by another notch, in one his sharpest personal attacks against the prime minister to date.

"The countdown for the Right has begun," Papandreou told the conference's delegates, stressing that the ruling party was "on the run" and that PASOK had learned from its mistakes and was now ready for "the day after".

According to Papandreou, the former foreign minister in previous PASOK governments, the party's history had shown that every time that it honoured its relations with the people it had triumphed and Greece had done great things.

"When we pulled away from this relationship, the citizens turned their backs on us, when we strayed we allowed the Right to lead Greece into problems. Fortunately, these were always brief interludes, such as the one now," he said.

Former prime minister and PASOK leader Costas Simitis on Friday also addressed the first day's session, where he said that "a policy programme, dialogue and continuation of the process to develop it are necessary steps towards our election victory".

"It must be made clear what we want as a result of our policy; how this is achieved; with what means and what abilities we have; what forces support us and which ones react," the former premier, who ruled from 1996 to 2004, said to PASOK's delegates.

He also outlined what he charged were the ruling New Democracy government's weaknesses in the three years it has assumed the country's helm, namely, a major slide in competitiveness; heightened borrowing by households with increasingly higher interest rates; a downgrading of the country's public services and a 'dramatic', as he said, decrease in public investments.

Earlier, PASOK secretary Nikos Athanassakis note that "we are changing PASOK in order to again change Greece," speaking at the party's two-day conference in the Peace & Friendship indoor stadium in the coastal Faliro district.

"PASOK will vie for the Greek electorate's vote in the upcoming elections with George Papandreou at the helm and with a 'change of course' as its central message," he said.

Athanassakis referred to the organisational restructuring of the party, putting special emphasis on its regional organisation. He stressed that this reflected an overall view that applied not just to party structures but to the kind of state that PASOK envisaged building.

[02] Woman unhurt after falling under moving train

The train's engineer saw the woman fall on the tracks and immediately pressed the emergency brakes, although the Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) train still overshot the spot where the woman fell by several metres.

When the driver climbed down to see what happened, however, he found that the elderly woman was completely unhurt though shaken up by her misadventure. Her lucky escape was explained by the fact that she was between the rails and the train relatively high above the tracks.

Caption: A file photo of a Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) train in northern Greece. ANA-MPA / N. ARVANITIDIS.

[03] Tourism & Property Show 2007 in Athens

Commenting on her ministry's policy regarding the all-important but still under-developed tourism and holiday property market in Greece, the minister said a new legislation on health tourism, combined with special town planning on tourism, should provide a necessary boost to business activity in the sector.

She also reiterated that Greece would not repeat mistakes made by other countries in promoting vacation real estate, stressing that significant attention would be given to protecting the environment.

Caption: Tourism Development Minister Fani Palli Petralia. ANA-MPA / P. STOLIS.

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