NEWS IN DETAIL

Seamen end strike as workers begin a 24-hour stoppage

The stoppage, which paralysed transport and caused hardships to the Greek islands, involved all ships with Greek crews and kept vessels moored at port stranding thousands of angry passengers and hundreds of local and foreign lorries in Greek and Italian ports.

A federation spokesman said their union has accepted "improved government proposals submitted to them by a committee headed by Merchant Marine Minister Stavros Soumakis."

The seamen's main demands was preservation of a special tax status for them since 1955 which the government changed in its tax legislation.

A merchant marine ministry spokesman said that sailings to the islands and other destinations resumed normally as the seamen called off their strike.

In a statement, the General Secretary of the Seamen's Federation (PNO), Ioannis Halas said that the government's new proposals "are a positive first step although they did not fully satisfy all the seamen's problems."

Halas warned that "if satisfactory solutions will not be given there will be a new round of strikes."

The government's new proposals, he said, include the starting of a dialogue between the employers, the seamen and the state for the settlement of employment issues on ocean-going vessels, the seamen's registry, preservation of pensions at 58 per cent of their basic wages and the taxation of officers' salaries with 8.0 per cent this year, 9.0 per cent from 1998 and on, and 4.0 and 6.0 per cent respectively for lower-ranking crews.

Nationwide strike on today

The walkout is expected to affect the country's private and public sectors, including banks, with widespread disruptions in transportation services.

The main demands put by GSEE are the index-linking of tax brackets to inflation and the increase - to 2 million drachmas - of tax-free income.

The government will examine trade union demands concerning the new tax bill ''in a positive spirit'', Finance Undersecretary George Drys told a delegation of General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) today.

Drys met the delegation after GSEE held a protest rally and march to Parliament during the labour grouping's 24-hour nationwide strike.

Commenting on trade unions' main demands, Drys promised that the index- linking of tax brackets to inflation and the increase of tax-free income to 2 million drachmas would be introduced as of 1998, which means that it will apply to income earned during 1997.

He also promised that an ''organised'' dialogue would begin with the competent bodies of mass labour movements in 1997 ''in order for measures to be agreed which will make the taxation system simpler and fairer.

GSEE President Christos Polyzogopoulos welcomed Drys' pledges, describing them as ''a positive development''.

Meanwhile, trade unionists said the level of participation in today's 24- hour strike and rally had been satisfactory.

Teachers will continue labour action

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, teachers' representatives said their main demands had not been met and they had not been given specific replies.

Following the talks, attended also by Finance Undersecretary Nikos Christodoulakis, the teachers' union (OLME) recommended that its members continue the strike next week also.

Calling late last night on the teachers to end their strike, Arsenis said he had told their representatives that he was willing to discuss the possibility of pay increases for 1998 and 1999.

Teachers' representatives are insisting that the strike will continue if monthly increases of 70,000 drachmas are not given in 1997.

Pangalos calls on US to commit to moratorium on Cyprus

Pangalos was commenting on recent statements by US State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns that Cyprus was in no need of Russian S-300 missiles if there was a moratorium on military overflights over Cyprus.

"If this (Burns's statement) means that the US commits itself to intervening in case the Turks intensify in any way the tension on the island and to intercept or destroy Turkish (fighter) planes, then the US proposal is interesting and we are prepared to discuss it again," Pangalos said.

He clarified that a moratorium on overflights over the island "could hold under normal conditions" but that Nicosia's decision to purchase the Russian S-300 missiles was about "dealing with abnormal conditions".

Pangalos stressed however that these proposals did not serve to resolve the "larger political issue which arises from the fact that Turkey does not respect international law and the resolutions of the United Nations, neither for the Aegean or for Cyprus".

"A solution of the political problem will reposition the role of efforts to mutually reduce the possibility of a military threat," Pangalos said.

"Greece has laid out very specific proposals both on the demilitarisation of Cyprus and the creation of good neighbourly relations with Turkey, which some day will have to be discussed," he said. "We have done our duty. It's time for Turkey to do its."

"Greece is ready to contribute to any development which will defuse tension in the Aegean," he added, clarifying that Greece was not prepared to negotiate over its sovereign rights.

Pangalos also denied press reports of differences between Athens and Nicosia over policy, syaing that there was "full identity of views" between Cyprus President Glafcos Clerides and Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis during their talks in Athens last week.

Greece targets increased trade with Romania, Romanian FM told

Pangalos was speaking after an hour-long meeting with his visiting Romanian counterpart Adrian Severin, who arrived in Athens yesterday.

Pangalos reiterated Greece's support for Romania's efforts to join the European Union, saying that Athens considered the inclusion of Balkan countries in the EU to be a priority.

Commenting on the impending expansion of NATO to include central and eastern European nations, Pangalos said he was in favour of including any countries which desired membership.

Severin told reporters that all the countries belonging to the same geo- political area, such as the Balkans, should be admitted to NATO at the same time.

The foreign ministers also announced that the prime ministers of both countries would visit one another in the next three months.

Simitis meets with US envoy

The sources added that Greek-Turkish relations and the Cyprus problem had also been discussed in the light of recent developments.

Neither Simitis nor Niles made statements to reporters after the meeting.

Earlier, Simitis received visiting Romanian Foreign Minister Adrian Severin.

Papantoniou confident inflation will fall

Speaking in Parliament during a debate on the government's new tax bill, Papantoniou also predicted that interest rates on treasury bills and state bonds would have dropped to single figures by the summer, ''thus confirming the good course of the Greek economy''.

Papantoniou was replying to main opposition New Democracy party leader Miltiades Evert, who had accused the government of following an economic policy which led only to an impasse, an increase in taxes and ''perpetuates the wasteful state''.

Evert disputed that the Greek economy was on a good course, saying that the government, ''instead of reining in the wasteful state, is resorting to more taxes in order to preserve it''.

The ND leader claimed that in the period 1994-95, the taxes paid by pensioners and salary-earners had increased by 28 and 30 per cent respectively.

The corresponding increase in incomes had been 11 per cent, the main opposition leader said, reflecting what he called ''the bleeding dry of the lower and middle-level economic strata''.

Commenting on the criticism levelled at him from opposition parties for not index-linking tax brackets to inflation, Papantoniou acknowledged that the criticism may be partly justified.

Greece's biggest labour grouping, the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE), has organised a nationwide 24-hour strike today to protest the government's economic policy -- its main demand being the index-linking of tax brackets.

Papantoniou underlined however that such index-linking would cost the state 100 billion drachmas, of which only 21 billion would be distributed among the great majority of taxpayers, while the remaining 79 billion drachmas would be to the benefit of a very small number of taxpayers who declare the largest amounts of income.

Truck driver gets 13 life sentences for murders

Antonis Daglis committed the murders between 1993 and 1995.

In particularly gruesome testimony, the court heard how he had used a saw to dismember his victims before disposing of their body parts in rubbish bins.

Daglis was also found guilty of raping an English prostitute working in Greece and the illegal use of a weapon -- a piece of rope which he used to strangle his victims.

Before announcing its verdict, which Daglis listened to impassively, the accused had prohibited a court-appointed defence lawyer from making his closing address, saying he did not consider him to be his defence counsel.

Daglis earlier this week surprised the court by admitting to all three murders but today retracted his confession, saying he had killed only one, by accident.

''I hated all prostitutes and continue to hate them. I went to meet them for sex but suddenly other pictures came into my head. I heard voices which ordered me to kill. Once I thought about strangling my fiancee, but I restrained myself,'' Daglis had told the court on Tuesday.

Mother kills pregnant daughter

Panayiota Tsifrika was remanded in custody yesterday after an autopsy on her eight-month pregnant daughter Constantina, 21, revealed pesticide in her stomach.

Police said Tsifrika confessed to placing a large amount of pesticide in her daughters' food on Sunday night. Constantina was found dead in her bed on Monday.

Tsifrika, a widow and mother to another four children, told police that she wanted "to wipe the stain of disgrace" from her family and to avert her other children suffering from the "blight" of an illegitimate child in the family.

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