Greek police clash with anti-austerity protesters By COSTAS KANTOURIS and NICHOLAS PAPHITIS - Associated Press
http://news.yahoo.com/greek-police-clash-anti-austerity-protesters-172258353.html THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) Riot police fired tear gas Saturday to disperse anti-austerity protesters marching in Greece's second-largest city ahead of the prime minister's annual speech on the economy. From taxi drivers to sports fans, more than 17,000 angry citizens were protesting in the northern port of Thessaloniki. Police said they were attacked with flare guns, stones, sticks and even a petrol bomb, and they arrested two people while detaining another 94. Prime Minister George Papandreou's Socialist government has imposed painful austerity measures cutting pensions and salaries while raising taxes and retirement ages to secure vital international rescue loans worth euro219 billion ($302.6 billion). But its efforts to economize while reviving a fast-contracting economy amid record unemployment have faltered, sparking new market distress. On Friday, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos was forced to deny rumors of impending bankruptcy over the weekend. The default rumors, combined with the sudden resignation of senior European Central Bank official Juergen Stark, created fresh market fears that sent yields on Greek 10-year bonds surging to 21 percent. Greece has the worst credit rating in the world, just shy of default. In Thessaloniki on Saturday, several thousand taxi drivers protesting new licensing reforms launched a chain of separate marches, chanting anti-government slogans. Members of the barely-solvent country's two biggest labor unions, university students, anarchists and even fans of Thessaloniki soccer club Iraklis followed on their heels. Some 2,000 members of a Communist union held a peaceful protest in Athens. Despite the market rumors of doom, Venizelos insisted Saturday that the country could still pull through. "Whoever believes that Greece has been broken or has no hope is clearly out of touch with reality," he said. "The two coming months are crucial for the very existence of our country, these are two months whose every day counts as a year in terms of effort." By the end of October, Greece has to conclude talks on a complex bond swap deal under which private holders of its debt mostly banks and pension funds will take a loss on their holdings in return for new, more secure bonds. It must also persuade the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, which are providing the bailout loans, that it is making sufficient progress with fiscal discipline, reforms and privatizations. If Athens fails in that, the country will not receive the next euro8 billion ($11 billion) batch of its loans, and will go bankrupt within weeks. "The clearest message Greece is sending at this point ... is that we are absolutely determined, without taking any momentary political cost into account, to fully meet our obligations to our partners," Venizelos insisted. But he warned that the economy, in its third year of recession, is shrinking at a faster-than-expected pace, further hampering ambitious efforts to cut the budget deficit to 7.5 percent of gross domestic product this year. "The forecast in May was a 3.8 percent contraction, and we are currently above 5 percent," he said. Elected two years ago with a 10 percent margin, Papandreou's Socialists have seen their ratings fade as the cutbacks soared. A poll in the Sunday edition of Kathimerini newspaper shows the opposition conservatives 4 percentage points ahead, 32 percent to 28 percent, but also forecast a hung parliament if elections were be held now. The Public Issue poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percent. Under the previous conservative government, Greece falsified some of its financial data to hide the true extent of the country's debt problems. ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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