Greek ex-PM slams his successor’s handling of debt crisis

PanARMENIAN.Net - The man who led Greece into the euro has attacked former Prime Minister George Papandreou's handling of the debt crisis, adding to infighting threatening the Socialist Party's position in the ruling coalition, Reuters reported.

Costas Simitis, who was Prime Minister from 1996 to 2004 and ushered the country into the single currency in 2001, said in a new book that the government of his former ally and fellow Socialist was naive and incompetent when the crisis erupted in late 2009.

"It was not up to the task," Simitis wrote in his book called "Derailment". "It reacted late, without due preparation... It held utopian positions, such as the limitless and unchecked issuing of (joint) euro bonds."

Papandreou's staff was not experienced enough to cope with the crisis, said Simitis. "His advisors, more numerous than those by any other prime minister, formed different teams which did not coordinate and were antagonistic to each other," he said.

Papandreou's finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, wrongly rejected a debt restructuring, Simitis said.

"The government was insisting that the debt was viable and that developments were favorable," he wrote.