German Ambassador’s Residence in Greece Attacked
By LIZ ALDERMAN
Published: December 30, 2013
Assailants raked the German ambassador’s residence in Athens with
gunfire early on Monday in an attack that caused no injuries, Greek
police officials said.
The police found 60 spent bullet casings at the scene and detained six
people in connection with the incident, which occurred around 3:30 a.m.
in an affluent suburb north of Athens. The bullet casings came from two
Kalashnikov assault rifles, according to the police.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, in which four bullets hit a
security gate. But anti-German sentiment has been festering among many
Greeks struggling with record unemployment and reduced salaries under a
harsh austerity plan required for Greece’s international bailout, which
Germany had a major role in selecting the terms of.
“Nothing, but really nothing, can justify such an attack on a
representative of our country,” the German foreign minister,
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said in a statement in Berlin. He said Germany
took the attack seriously and a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the
Greek authorities had reacted swiftly and assured Germany they would
strengthen security in Athens.
Chancellor Angela Merkel received a phone call from Prime Minister
Antonis Samaras of Greece, which for the next six months will hold the
rotating presidency of the European Union, according to the government
spokesman, Steffen Seibert. Greece can count on Germany’s full support,
he added.
“The Greek government expresses its abhorrence and utter condemnation of
today’s cowardly act of terrorism, the sole and obvious target of which
was Greece’s image abroad just a few days before the start of the
Hellenic Presidency of the Council of the E.U.,” the Greek Foreign
Ministry said in a statement.
Germany is the largest contributor to Greece’s 240-billion euro, or
roughly $330 billion, bailout. Recently, Mr. Samaras has been pressing
Germany to reduce and renegotiate Athens’ delinquent debts as it
grapples with a wrenching five-year recession — something Germany has
refused to do.
That has also fed a persistent low-grade anger over hundreds of billions
of euros in reparations that Greeks say Germany owes the country from
World War II, money that some say should go toward helping to forgive
Greece’s debt bill. Greek newspapers regularly run articles on how much
money Germany owes Greece.
Greece, which on Wednesday will take over the rotating European Union
presidency for six months, has made some progress in improving its
finances to meet the terms of the bailout — so much so that it is
forecast to have a primary surplus before debt payments in 2014 for the
first time in five years. But Greece still faces a mountain of debt that
economists say is all but unpayable unless some new form of debt
forgiveness is extended to Athens.
Over the weekend, Jens Weidmann, the chairman of the German Bundesbank
and a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, ruled out
another reduction in Greece’s state debt, saying in a German newspaper
interview that Athens still needed to press ahead with a number of
reforms as required by the terms of its bailout.
While financial markets have calmed recently, he told the newspaper
Bild, “this could be some misleading safety. The crisis could be fanned
again like a fire.”
His remarks echoed those of the German finance minister, Wolfgang
Schäuble, who is widely reviled in Greece. During a visit to Athens this
summer, police locked down the center of the city to pedestrian and car
traffic as helicopters flew overhead, leaving the streets in a ghostly
state of quiet. The scenes were reminiscent of when Chancellor Angela
Merkel visited Greece in 2012.
Representatives of the so-called troika of lenders — the European
Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European
Commission — are scheduled to return to Athens in January to resume
talks over a fresh 4.9-billion euro tranche of aid.
terrorist group November 17, which has since been dismantled.
Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday,
the incident follows an apparent rise in violent incidents both by
far-right and far-left groups in Greece.
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