The war of words between the Greek Defence Minister, Panos Kammenos and the leftist pro-SYRIZA newspaper, “Efimerida ton Syntakton” has intensified after the president of ANEL, SYRIZA’s junior coalition partner in the government, accused the media outlet of executing a “paid contract”.

His allegation follows the paper’s front page which claimed Mr Kammenos had backtracked on his views on the name dispute with FYROM and the US military bases in Greece after a phone contact with Greek PM Alexis Tsipras.
“Efimerida ton Syntakton is executing a contract on behalf of a specific political and business center with a lot of money that will soon be revealed”, Mr Kammenos tweeted. The Defence Minister suggested the newspaper printed blatant lies without an inkling of proof.

The newspaper responded on his social media that the minister was making claims about false publications but did not refer to anything specific in the article, except the fact that after his controversial statements in the US (about the US expanding its military bases in Greece) there was a telephone communication between himself and the Prime Minister at the initiative of the latter.