Conservatives slam government for not letting police do its job

The government came under a hail of criticism on Friday from opposition parties over the street riots that marred the anniversary on Thursday of the deadly crackdown on a student uprising in 1973 by the military junta.

The vice president of New Democracy, Adonis Georgiadis, blamed the government, and Citizens' Protection Minister Nikos Toskas in particular, for not allowing, as he said, the police to do its job. He said that Toskas had ignored a prosecutor's ruling that gave police the green light to enter the premises of the Athens Polytechnic, where the riots were centered around, if there was sufficient cause to do so.

"This was a political decision," he told Alpha radio, adding that Toskas did not allow police to get close. He insisted that New Democracy would have backed the government if it had acted on the prosecutor's ruling.

Georgiadis, whose office in...