Yet this reflected reforms by Costas Simitis, his Pasok predecessor, to get Greece into the euro.

ECONOMIST: Greece's riots

Still, Costas Simitis of Greece, the host at the summit, and Turkey's Mesut Yilmaz, both German-speakers, got on well.

ECONOMIST: Greece and Turkey

Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, also urged European leaders to find some ground for unity.

BBC: Iraq rift overshadows EU summit

Just before Christmas, Mr Clerides at last gave way to the chorus of appeals from the West, including those of Costas Simitis, Greece's prime minister.

ECONOMIST: Cyprus

Since then Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis has taken personal charge of the Games, promising that making a success of 2004 would be his government's top priority.

BBC: Greece faces Olympic race

Costas Simitis, Greece's moderate prime minister, had his first meeting with Mr Ecevit during the summit in Istanbul last month of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

ECONOMIST: Cyprus

If the airline does finally crash, it will be a big blow to Greece's reforming prime minister, Costas Simitis: it has become a test-case in his campaign to reform his country's slovenly public sector.

ECONOMIST: Greece

Through his cronies and his latest (third) wife, a former air hostess 36 years his junior and regarded by some as ridiculously vulgar, he had begun to make mischief even for the current, more modern-minded, prime minister, Costas Simitis.

ECONOMIST: From the archive

But he put off a lot of businessmen, many of whom switched to Costas Simitis and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) at the general election last September, because Mr Simitis genuinely seemed to have sloughed off the profligate economics and cheap populism of his late predecessor, Andreas Papandreou.

ECONOMIST: Greece