World Notes GREECE

After nine days of trying to form a coalition to end the parliamentary stalemate that followed Greece's elections on June 18, both hospitalized caretaker Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and conservative leader Constantine Mitsotakis dropped their insistence on being appointed head of the new government. At that, Communist Party chief Harilaos Florakis, leader of the Alliance of the Left and Progress, which holds the balance of power between the two rivals, announced that he would support a three-month government with Mitsotakis' New Democracy Party.

The main task of the new administration, to be headed by veteran New Democracy parliamentarian Tzannis Tzannetakis, will be the investigation and punishment of senior officials involved in a web of financial scandals, including the alleged embezzlement of some $210 million from the Bank of Crete. Once that is achieved, new elections will be scheduled.