New P.M. causes fear

Press, 20 October 1981, Page 8

New P.M. causes fear

NZPA Athens Greece’s new Prime. Minister, Andrea's Papandreou, a curious mix of political radical and respected intellectual with close ties io the United States,' has struck fear both at home and abroad with some of his stated plans. The large, bushy-eye-browed founder and leader of the ;'Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) has gained an immense following with fiery speeches advocating a Greek pull-out from both ' the North Atlantic Treaty- Organisation and the European Economic Community. Only President Constantine Karamanlis has as great a political stature in Greece. But his charisma has- had little, effect on domestic Centre-Rightists, European Socialists, and American conservatives, who have shown private concern over Mr Papandreou’s expressed feeling that Greece historically is closer'.to Turkey, its tradi-tional-adversary, and to the Arab‘world than to the West.

Thus, despite a personal intervention from President Lyndon Johnson that helped free him from imprisonment after a 1967 military coup d’etat, he has often charged that the overthrow of Greek democracy then was “the American version of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Pact.”

Mr Papandreou’s domestic enemies have seized on his American ties, which included a long exile beginning before World War II; during which he took American citizenship and an American wife, to question his sincerity.

They have also noted that he was never in Greece during difficult times, such as the post-war dictatorship of • loannis Metaxis or the colonels’ regime between 1967 and 1974.

Mr Papandreou was born on February 5, 1919,. at Chios, eastern Greece. His ’ father was the former Prime Minister, George Papandreou, who

co-founded the liberal Centre Union Party. Andreas Papandreou left Greece just before the war, was educated at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, and then moved to the University of California at Berkeley, where-he later held a chair in the economics department.

He married an American, Margaret Chant, who later bore him four children, and became an American citizen.

Mr Papandreou returned to Greece in 1962, renounced his American citizenship and entered politics with his father.

In 1964, after a Centre Union election victory, he was named Deputy Economic Co-ordination Minister, but his .militancy on the party's L-eft wing made too many enemies and he was soon forced to resign. Mr Papandreou was imprisoned in 1967, after the colonels took power and implicated him in an antiroyalist, anti-American conspiracy known as Aspi-Da (shield).

After President Johnson helped him gain release, he left for Sweden in 1968. and began criticising his father for being too conciliatory towards the Greek monarchy. He formed the Panhellenic National Liberation Movement, a coalition group made up of people opposed to the colonels.

The group, made up mostly of youthful Marxists, claimed responsibility for an attack on the dictator, George Papadopoulos, in 1968.

Mr Papandreou returned to a tumultuous welcome in Athens in August. 1974, after the colonels had been ousted, and then reorganised the Panhellenic National Liberation Movement into his. present party, known by its intitials. Pasok.

Pasok won only 14 seats in the 1974 election, but increased that figure to 93 three years later, as Mr Papandreou became increasingly outspoken against Greece’s ' alignment with N.A.T.O. and the E.E.C.