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ATHENS (AFP) Sep 12, 2004 Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis said Sunday that the air force chief of staff had been sacked following a helicopter crash that killed the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria and 16 others. Caramanlis said Defense Minister Spilios Spiliotopoulos had asked for Lietenant General Panayotis Papanikolaou's resignation. He said he had declined Spiliotopoulos' offer to also step down over the incident. "There was no political responsibility but a breakdown in the army system," he said. The Chinook helicopter carrying the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, Peter VII, crashed Saturday on its way from an Athens military base to the Mount Athos monastery near the Aegean Sea. Opposition newspapers on Sunday said rescue workers were slow to respond to the accident. All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.
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