Greece names technocrat cabinet

2012-05-17 08:40

Athens - Greece on Thursday named a caretaker cabinet of technocrats, headed by a senior judge, tasked with organising fresh elections in June after an inconclusive ballot on 6 May that has raised eurozone concern.

The temporary team, led by 67-year-old Panagiotis Pikrammenos, the head of Greece's top administrative court, mostly includes prominent university professors, a retired general and one of the country's most respected diplomats.

George Zannias, formerly head of the state's council of economic advisors and a key negotiator in Greece's recent landmark debt rollover, has been appointed finance minister, a government statement said.

Petros Molyviatis, an 83-year-old retired diplomat, returns to head the foreign ministry after a previous stint in 2004-2006.

And Greece's former head of the army general staff Frangos Frangoulis has been named to the defence ministry.

The new cabinet will be sworn in an hour before parliament is scheduled to convene.

The caretaker administration was appointed after Greek political parties failed to form a coalition government following elections in which no clear victor emerged.

The political uncertainty in Greece has raised fears among the country's international creditors, the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that structural reforms pledged in return for bailout loans, will be delayed or even scuppered.

The party most likely to win the next election, radical leftist Syriza, wants to tear up Greece's EU-IMF loan agreement and overthrow labour and salary reforms it rejects as "barbaric".

- SAPA