George Papandreou, the foreign minister and son of Pasok's populist founder, the late Andreas Papandreou, would be the best-qualified alternative.

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American officials reacted to Andreas Papandreou's speech with a sophisticated shrug.

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Such people, old disciples of the late Andreas Papandreou, Greece's long-serving populist leader, have portrayed Mr Ocalan and the rebel Kurds as noble guerrillas fighting for independence from Turkey, just as Greeks did in the last century.

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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.

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She appeals to Mr Papandreou's idealistic side, and also goes down well with tax-and-spend socialists who recall Mr Papandreou's father, Andreas, as prime minister in the 1980s.

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