Papandreou seriously ill

Press, 26 June 1989, Page 10

Papandreou seriously ill

NZPA-Reuter Athens The outgoing Greek Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, was in a serious condition yesterday suffering from heart and kidney complications, hospital sources said. Mr Papandreou’s former wife, Margaret — seeing him for the first time in more than a year — and his air-hostess fiancee, Dimitra Liani, rushed to the State-run Athens General ’ Hospital, where Mr Papandreou lay in the intensive care cardiac unit. "The Prime Minister has suffered heart and kidney complications despite a clear improvement as far as pneumonia is concerned,” his

doctors said in a medical bulletin early yesterday. Half-a-dozen senior Ministers, including his son, the Education Minister, George Papandreou, were at the hospital, where Mr Papandreou was admitted with pneumonia on Thursday. Athens radio reported heart specialists from Greece and abroad were flying to Athens to examine the Prime Minister. Mr Papandreou underwent seven hours of open-heart surgery, including a triple-bypass, in London last August. The hospital sources said one of the replacement cardiac valves had been infected.

The veteran socialist leader, who has dominated Greek politics for eight years with landslide wins in 1981 and 1985, came a distant second in elections on June 18 in which no party won an absolute majority. On Friday, Mr Papandreou was given three days to persuade a communist-led alliance into forming a coalition Government. The mandate was given to Mr Papandreou after the conservative New Democracy party leader, Constantine Mitsotakis, winner of the elections, failed to form a Government despite offering the Communists two Ministries in a coalition.