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Sunday, 22 December 2024 | ||
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Athens News Agency: News in English, 08-10-02Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next ArticleFrom: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>CONTENTS
[01] Papandreou meets French Socialist MP RoyalMain opposition PASOK party leader and Socialist International (SI) President George Papandreou hosted a working luncheon for French Socialist deputy and former presidential candidate Segolene Royal in Athens on Thursday saying afterwards that the socialists will not accept the global credit crisis being placed on the shoulders of midde class people and the less privileged, adding that "a struggle will be waged, initiatives will be taken and there will be close cooperation with Segolene and the socialists of Europe with these aims."Papandreou said that the socialists have already taken initiatives which will be continued at international and European level so that "there shall be new policies, market functioning rules and protection for the income of the average and low-salary families." Royal said that the present crisis "proves that the values of the Left are being mobilised today to give it a solution." She further said that "policy must be ahead of economic logic, in the need for a fairer distribution of wealth and, mainly, in a monetary system that will be at the service of the economy and in an economy that will be at the service of human development." Royal went on to say that "we are ultimately realising, in other words, that all are appropriating socialist values and the values of the Left for their own benefit. We are watching in France even the President of the Republic speaking a leftist language. We suddenly see even Mr. (U.S. President George W.) Bush, who was the most hostile towards state intervention, nationalising banks and finding, from one moment to the next, 700 billion dollars, when he could not find them to relieve the world food crisis." Lastly, she said that the words of the socialists will have proved to be beneficial "only if we want, indeed, these words to become deeds and the crisis to be beneficial, meaning to allow an in-depth change both of policies and of the system and not an offhand means that will merely allow the reproduction of the system." Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article |