Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 14-01-30

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

CONTENTS

[01] Karas & Hoang Ngoc contradicted each other

[01] Karas & Hoang Ngoc contradicted each other

Austrian Europarliament deputy Karas pointed out there was no contradiction nor did he do any corrections compared to the previous day, responding to a remark by SYRIZA Europarliament deputy Nikos Chountis that Karas had restated and corrected a previous comment.

Referring to Tsipras, Karas said that SYRIZA leader had given them a text and had offered his support to their work. He clarified though that he did not intend to interpret or evaluate Tsipras' work.

French socialist Ngoc said Tsipras did not go to Strasbourg without a proposal, but with a text termed as "Greek bail-out programme", which the two Europarliament deputies included in the agenda of their report and refers to points 17 and 18 regarding the social impact of the troika's policy in Greece.

Main opposition (SYRIZA) spokesman Panagiotis Skourletis on Thursday characterised the statement of European Parliament Vice President Othmar Karas on Alexis Tsipras as "a vulgar and false attack".

"We all know the political friendship between himself and (Prime Minister Antonis) Samaras," Skourletis said at private TV station Ant1.

Karas said that he met with Tsipras in Strasbourg for over an hour and asked him about his experience as the main opposition leader, about his goals and proposals and for an hour he had nothing to say. "The only thing he said is that he supports the European Parliament and he wants to give it a more central role in the negotiations with the troika," he noted.

SYRIZA in a statement early on Thursday described the comments "false and slanderous claims" and attibuted the whole issue to a wrong translation. "Tsipras' reaction was attributed to a mistake in the translation of Karas' words. Specifically, the party's announcement claimed that "Tsipras" in Karas' question was translated as "Cyprus", which led to the question being misunderstood," according to the announcement.

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