ATHENS -- There were crowds, the music of Mikis Theodorakis, banners, a sea of green and white Socialist party flags, the hyped anticipation of the evening's speaker. It seemed to echo an earlier, more idealistic age in the history of Western protest movements.
Hundreds of thousands ecstatically greeted Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou's appearance in the central square of Salonika, Greece's second largest city.
'With you, Andreas, for a new Greece,' they chanted.
Barely audible, Papandreou's voice rose above the chants, playing the crowd, raising the specter of danger from the 'right,' the opposition New Democracy Party.
'Papandreou has an erotic, almost religious relationship with the masses,' said one of the prime minister's aides. 'How could Ayatollah Khomeini match this?'
The prime minister, beating the campaign trail for next month's election of Greece's 24 deputies in the 434-member European parliament, rejected a dialogue with fellow NATO member Turkey and lashed out at U.S. support for the government in Ankara.
Five days later, Papandreou addressed 2,400 delegates at the congress of his Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), the first in its 10-year history.
He set off alarm bells in Washington and other Western capitals by praising the Soviet Union as a force against U.S. imperialism and world capitalism and as a country struggling for detente.
Disengagement from NATO and the dismantling of U.S. military installations in Greece are his 'strategic goal,' he said.
A week later, Papandreou braved accusations that he was weakening the Western alliance by vehemently opposing NATO plans to place U.S.-built surface-to-surface Harpoon missiles along Turkey's Aegean coast.
Western diplomats and Papandreou's opponents wonder how far to the left he intends to go.
The business community blames him for the economic crisis and diminishing confidence in the market. A respected opposition journalist charges him with 'constructing a socialist semi-dictatorship.'
But his supporters, some Western diplomats and some of his fiercest opponents believe that Papandreou's growl may be worse than his bite. His rhetoric is meant to appease the far left, they say.
'The prime minister is like a man who promises his wife a mink coat but cannot afford it,' said Eleni Vlachou, a strong-willed publisher and opponent of Papandreou. 'He gives her some perfume instead, cheap non-French perfume. That's what Papandreou gives his left wing, little token presents.'
Papandreou last year disregarded pre-election pledges to rid Greece of the U.S. military presence by approving an agreement keeping the bases here for another five years.
He curtailed Greece's participation in NATO's military activity but did nothing to fulfill his promise to withdraw Greece from NATO and the European Community altogether.
'Papandreou grudgingly admits that he needs the United States if Greece's disputes with Turkey over the Aegean and Cyprus are to be resolved,' said a Western diplomat who knows him well.
Obsessed with the gap between rich and poor nations, he talks of his 'third road to socialism' that will create 'a new and different society.' His speeches, peppered with socialist rhetoric and anti-U.S. slogans, often appear confused and vague on what that 'third road' is.
He champions Third World causes, denounces U.S. policy in Central America and supports peace movements in Europe. Soviet-backed proposals for a nuclear-free zone in the Balkans have become his pet project.
Yet ironically, alone among European heads of government, Papandreou and his U.S.-born wife, Margaret, spent 15 years in the United States, where he taught economics at the universities of Minnesota and Berkeley, Calif.
Now, 2 years after PASOK swept to power as the first left-wing government in almost 40 years, criticism of his administration focuses on the laxness of his government.
'The Papandreou crowd doesn't need an opposition,' Vlachou said. 'They are so inefficient that opposition is built into their own ranks.'
Politicians and diplomats credit President Constantine Karamanlis for keeping Papandreou from fulfilling his more radical election promises, even though the prime minister's majority in parliament allows him to all but disregard the opposition.
'Karamanlis looks over Papandreou's shoulder to a certain extent and Papandreou recognizes him as the most revered figure in Greece,' a Western diplomat said.
The president is believed to have promised a public showdown were Papandreou to attempt to fulfill his pledge to pull Greece out of NATO or the EEC or to push tension with Turkey too close to the brink, politicians and diplomats said.
