Greek Truckers strike forces military into action

ATHENS — Greece dispatched military trucks Friday to alleviate a nationwide fuel shortage caused by striking truckers which has disrupted freight transport and travel in the busy tourist season.
"The armed forces with their own means are already assuring the supply of critical sectors such as airports, electricity plants and hospitals," the government said after a crisis cabinet meeting.
"Navy landing craft will also contribute if necessary to cover the needs of islands by transporting tanker trucks," it added.
The authorities, which had issued a civil mobilisation order on Wednesday that the strikers ignored, added that truckers who continued to defy the law would be prosecuted and their operating licenses could be forfeited.
Five people including a policeman were injured on Thursday in a clash between striking truckers and riot police outside a refinery near Thessaloniki, northern Greece, the semi-state Athens News Agency reported.
"We exhausted every limit of good faith," Transport Minister Dimitris Reppas said after the cabinet meeting.
"The state is not unfortified and society is not defenceless," he said.
The truckers, who have blocked most fuel deliveries since Sunday, had earlier decided to maintain their protest against government plans to liberalise the sector and reduce freight costs as Greece battles an unprecedented financial crisis.
"We will continue (the strike) in dynamic fashion," the head of the Greek truck owners confederation, George Tzortzatos, told reporters after a union meeting. A few hundred strikers later marched on parliament.
The government on Wednesday told the truckers to go back to work under a requisition order over growing concerns about fuel, food and medicine supplies and the fate of hundreds of thousands of Greeks and foreigners whose travel plans have been thrown into disarray.
But the process began haltingly with only a few hundred civil mobilisation orders so far handed out in each of the country's regions.