Greece Replaces Finance Minister

Evangelos Venizelos, the former defense minister, replaced Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, who has been the highly visible face of the government’s austerity drive.

Mr. Venizelos, 54, said at an afternoon press conference that he was ready to undertake the “historic challenge” of helping Greece to overcome its debt crisis. “I am leaving defense to go where the real battle is,” he said. In a speech to his new cabinet, Mr. Papandreou tried to rein in dissent and make clear how much was at stake, warning that the country’s debt burden “threatens to destroy us and wreck the lives of millions of Greeks.”

“We have a lot of hard work to do as a government before we are assessed by citizens in elections in 2013,” he added, referring to the year that the Socialists’ four-year term is due to expire and thus a clear indication that he had decided against a snap election.

The government is under pressure to push through budget cuts and tax increases in order to secure the next installment of a $155 billion rescue package pledged by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund and to qualify for a second bailout believed to be necessary to keep the country solvent.

But critics said that the reshuffle was a cosmetic, not structural, change. Yanis Varoufakis, a political economist at the University of Athens, told Skai television that “not even God almighty” as finance minister could change the dire situation.

Greeks increasingly feel they are unfairly suffering for mistakes made by their leaders and banks and have staged labor strikes and three weeks of daily protests to express their outrage. This week, Mr. Papandreou has contended with two defections from within his own Socialist Party and growing dissent. After the reshuffle, a confidence vote in the new government was expected on Tuesday night.

Mr. Venizelos, a respected professor of constitutional law at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in northern Greece, now faces the task of pushing through the hugely unpopular austerity program. A rival of Mr. Papandreou, he has held other ministerial portfolios over the years including culture and development, and challenged Mr. Papandreou for the leadership of the Socialist Party, known as Pasok, in 2007. Though he lost the leadership race, Mr. Papandreou has continued to rely heavily on him.

The new cabinet was met with criticism from other political parties. The main conservative opposition, New Democracy, said the removal of Mr. Papaconstantinou as finance minister amounted to “an admission of the failure of the government’s economic policy.” A spokesman for New Democracy, Yiannis Michelakis, accused the government of “rustling up a new administration to enforce the same erroneous policies.” Syriza, a coalition of leftist parties, said nothing could prevent the collapse of Mr. Papandreou’s beleaguered administration, and the Communists described the new cabinet as “dangerous.”

Mr. Venizelos said the government would continue to work for consensus with the parties that have opposed its austerity program. “We are open to ideas and dialogue but will not diverge from our fiscal targets,” he said. “The country must be saved and will be saved but we must work together, all Greeks together,’ he said.

Speaking at the same press conference, Mr. Papaconstantinou said he was “extremely happy” to be handing over the task of reviving the economy to a colleague with “experience and dedication.” While he acknowledged making mistakes during his term as finance minister, Mr. Papaconstantinou said the government’s actions had helped to avert a worse fate.

“We had reached the brink of disaster, and we managed to keep the country on its feet, and put into motion a series of important economic reforms,” he said. As evidence, he cited a crackdown on tax evasion, which has seen limited success, as well as the launch of a drive to privatize state assets. Greece, he noted, managed to reduce its budget deficit last year by 5 percent of gross domestic product, an unprecedented achievement for a euro-zone country.

Elias Mossialos, a professor of health policy at the London School of Economics who was appointed as the new government spokesman, replacing George Petalotis, told Net television, a state channel, that the priority now was “to restore the stability of the Greek economy.” He also said that “negotiations were under way” with Greece’s creditors regarding the terms of the bailout, but did not state explicitly that the country would seek changes to the existing agreement.

The Finance Ministry was initially offered to Lucas Papademos, a Columbia-educated economist who served as vice president of the European Central Bank from 2002 to 2010, but he turned it down.

Mr. Venizelos will also become a second deputy prime minister. Mr. Papandreou already has another Socialist veteran, Theodoros Pangalos, 73, as his first deputy.

Mr. Papaconstantinou, 50, the chief architect of the Greek government’s austerity drive, was named environment minister, a clear demotion.

Other key moves include the ousting of Dimitris Droutsas, 43, as foreign minister. He was replaced by Stavros Lambrinidis, a Yale-educated lawyer. Mr. Droutsas is broadly regarded by observers as having fallen short of the demands of a difficult portfolio.

Another victim of the reshuffle was Labor Minister Louka Katseli, 59, one of the most controversial figures in Mr. Papandreou’s cabinet. The Princeton-educated economist had repeatedly clashed with Greece’s foreign creditors on several proposed economic reforms including amending labor contracts that protect the rights of workers in the private sector. She was replaced by her deputy, Yiannis Koutroumanis.

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Pakistan’s Prime Minister Visits China

BEIJING — Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani arrived in China on Tuesday fora four-day visit, picking up some welcome diplomatic support at a critical moment in Pakistan’s relations with the United States.

The prime minister’s visit was planned as part of a long-planned celebration of diplomatic ties, but analysts said Pakistan is using it to hint that China is an alternative source of security and economic aid — a reassuring message for a nation angered and humiliated by the covert American raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

“It is being used for show, for politics, for domestic reasons, to show to the Pakistani public that if relations deteriorate with the United States, China is there to swing in with diplomatic and other support,” said Andrew Small, a fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Brussels. “China is playing along to some extent because Pakistan is in sort of a tight spot at the moment.”

Though Mr. Gilani arrived late Tuesday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said his visit would officially begin on Wednesday. The prime minister will meet with Premier Wen Jiabao, President Hu Jintao and various economic officials, the Chinese government said. He met earlier this week with Senator John Kerry, who flew to Islamabad to try to ease tensions over the raid.

Both Mr. Gilani and the Chinese media played up Pakistan’s ties with China. Xinhua, China’s official news agency, quoted Mr. Gilani on Tuesday saying, “We are proud to have China as our best and most trusted friend.”

A Foreign Ministry spokesman Tuesday promised China’s unswerving support to Pakistan’s fight on terrorism. A signed commentary the day before in People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, urged Americans to critically examine the unilateral nature of its raid and infringement on Pakistan’s territorial rights.

Analysts said that while China is happy to offer Pakistan diplomatic cover, it is wary of tilting too far in Pakistan’s direction. Annual trade between the two countries amounted last year to $8.7 billion, and China supplied Pakistan with two new civilian nuclear reactors, balancing a nuclear deal between the United States and India.

But “China wants to hold back from a full-on alliance,” Mr. Small said. “They don’t want to be stuck in a situation where they seem to have taken on too much direct responsibility” for a country with Pakistan’s security and political problems. While there is some talk in Islamabad that China might supplant the United States as Pakistan’s main economic backer, the Pakistani officials privately express little expectation that will happen.

Rong Ying, vice president of the China Institute of International Studies, said tense relations between the United States and Pakistan are more of a threat than a benefit to China. China has a huge stake in a stable Pakistan, he said, partly because it fears that Islamic militants could spill over into its western Xinjiang region.

“I think the United States should think about how it can damage-control relations with Pakistan,” he said.

Jane Perlez contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Li Bibo and Jon Kaiman contributed research from Beijing.

 

Japan’s Prime Minister Defends Handling of Crisis

In one of his most damaging charges, the adviser, Toshiso Kosako, drew attention to a recent government decision to allow children living near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to receive doses of radiation equal to the international standard for nuclear power plant workers. That level is far higher than international standards set for the public. “I cannot allow this as a scholar,” said Mr. Kosako, an expert on radiation safety at the University of Tokyo.

He also blasted the government for what he said was a lack of transparency in releasing radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and for setting an overly high limit on radiation exposure for workers who have spent weeks struggling to keep the plant under control.

Government advisory positions are considered prestigious, and it is highly unusual for an academic to quit one in protest. The prime minister brought Mr. Kosako on as an adviser after the powerful March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the plant, causing the world’s biggest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

His abrupt resignation fed growing criticism of the handling of the crisis by Mr. Kan’s government, which many Japanese suspect of understating the continuing dangers the plant might pose and the amount of radioactive material released so far.

Mr. Kan’s remarks before Parliament on Saturday were an indication of how much pressure the government is under as it tries to dispute those criticisms and to determine what to do not only about the most contaminated land around the plant, but also about towns outside the evacuation zone that are reporting relatively high levels of radiation.

Any decision about the levels of permissible exposure could force expensive soil cleanups — inflating the already staggering estimates of how much money it will take to rebuild from the natural disasters, a figure already set at $300 billion. But it could also help determine how much land in this densely populated country is ruled uninhabitable.

The calculus is complicated by the fears of farmers and fishermen in the region, who worry that continued talk of high radiation will destroy consumers’ faith in their goods, and their livelihoods.

In rejecting Mr. Kosako’s criticism, Mr. Kan said Saturday that the adviser had resigned as a result of “a difference of opinion among specialists.”

So far, the government has evacuated an area 12 miles around the plant and has suggested, or in limited cases ordered, that people living 12 to 19 miles away leave their homes temporarily. Some towns farther away are also set to be evacuated because particularly high levels of radioactive materials were found there.

The Education and Science Ministry made its announcement about permissible exposure on April 19, when it said that schools in Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is located, could be used if radiation levels were below 3.8 microsieverts per hour. That exposure level is too low to cause immediate health effects, but may raise the probability of developing cancer.

Environmental groups and local parents have called for lowering the limit, pointing out that children are more vulnerable to radiation than most adults. They have not addressed a perhaps more worrisome problem: if the schools have high levels of contamination, the rest of the towns and cities they are in are likely to also show high readings.

On Saturday, the chief government spokesman, Yukio Edano, defended the limit, saying that it did not mean that the government would accept such levels indefinitely and that it would do everything in its power to bring levels down to normal rates.

But at least one city in Fukushima, which is 35 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, is not waiting for the government to take action. The city of Koriyama said last week that it would remove topsoil at 15 elementary schools where radiation levels had been detected in excess of 3.8 microsieverts per hour, according to local newspaper reports.

Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting from Washington.

 

Japan’s Prime Minister Defends Handling of Crisis

In one of his most damaging charges, the adviser, Toshiso Kosako, drew attention to a recent government decision to allow children living near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to receive doses of radiation equal to the international standard for nuclear power plant workers. That level is far higher than international standards set for the public. “I cannot allow this as a scholar,” said Mr. Kosako, an expert on radiation safety at the University of Tokyo.

He also blasted the government for what he said was a lack of transparency in releasing radiation levels around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, and for setting an overly high limit on radiation exposure for workers who have spent weeks struggling to keep the plant under control.

Government advisory positions are considered prestigious, and it is highly unusual for an academic to quit one in protest. The prime minister brought Mr. Kosako on as an adviser after the powerful March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the plant, causing the world’s biggest nuclear disaster since the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

His abrupt resignation fed growing criticism of the handling of the crisis by Mr. Kan’s government, which many Japanese suspect of understating the continuing dangers the plant might pose and the amount of radioactive material released so far.

Mr. Kan’s remarks before Parliament on Saturday were an indication of how much pressure the government is under as it tries to dispute those criticisms and to determine what to do not only about the most contaminated land around the plant, but also about towns outside the evacuation zone that are reporting relatively high levels of radiation.

Any decision about the levels of permissible exposure could force expensive soil cleanups — inflating the already staggering estimates of how much money it will take to rebuild from the natural disasters, a figure already set at $300 billion. But it could also help determine how much land in this densely populated country is ruled uninhabitable.

The calculus is complicated by the fears of farmers and fishermen in the region, who worry that continued talk of high radiation will destroy consumers’ faith in their goods, and their livelihoods.

In rejecting Mr. Kosako’s criticism, Mr. Kan said Saturday that the adviser had resigned as a result of “a difference of opinion among specialists.”

So far, the government has evacuated an area 12 miles around the plant and has suggested, or in limited cases ordered, that people living 12 to 19 miles away leave their homes temporarily. Some towns farther away are also set to be evacuated because particularly high levels of radioactive materials were found there.

The Education and Science Ministry made its announcement about permissible exposure on April 19, when it said that schools in Fukushima Prefecture, where the plant is located, could be used if radiation levels were below 3.8 microsieverts per hour. That exposure level is too low to cause immediate health effects, but may raise the probability of developing cancer.

Environmental groups and local parents have called for lowering the limit, pointing out that children are more vulnerable to radiation than most adults. They have not addressed a perhaps more worrisome problem: if the schools have high levels of contamination, the rest of the towns and cities they are in are likely to also show high readings.

On Saturday, the chief government spokesman, Yukio Edano, defended the limit, saying that it did not mean that the government would accept such levels indefinitely and that it would do everything in its power to bring levels down to normal rates.

But at least one city in Fukushima, which is 35 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, is not waiting for the government to take action. The city of Koriyama said last week that it would remove topsoil at 15 elementary schools where radiation levels had been detected in excess of 3.8 microsieverts per hour, according to local newspaper reports.