‘Calling Palestinians terrorists has to stop’

It was June 29, 1982 and Andreas Papandreou had just returned from a fraught European Economic Community summit. The Greek prime minister gave his family a detailed account of what was said during the talks with his European counterparts with regard to the war that was raging in the Middle East at the time. Here, Kathimerini reveals extracts of that conversation, which was captured on tape, for the first time.

Papandreou had been prime minister for eight months after PASOK's victory in the October 18, 1981, elections when he was invited to attend the European Council meeting in Brussels on June 28 and 29, 1982. He went home to his family in the northern Athens suburb of Kastri as soon as he returned, where he recounted the events of the meeting to his wife Margaret, their sons George and Nikos, and his son-in-law Theodoros Katsanevas, in a conversation that was recorded on...