Greek conservatives pick Samaras as new leader

Greece's main opposition New Democracy party has chosen Antonis Samaras, a former foreign minister and party rebel, as its new leader, to help the ailing conservatives recover from stinging electoral defeat last month.

Samaras, 58, who trained as an economist at Harvard and Amherst College in the United States, won 50 percent of the vote in Sunday's nationwide poll of about 550,000 party members, the party said on Monday, based on preliminary results.

Samaras's main rival, former foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis, has conceded defeat.

Samaras has pledged to purge New Democracy of the corruption and incompetence that brought about its defeat by the socialist PASOK party in Oct. 4 elections.

"From tomorrow, we begin with dynamic opposition to reclaim the government of this country," Samaras said in a statement.

New Democracy had ruled Greece under former Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis since 2004. It lost the Oct. 4 vote with a 10-point margin as voters vented frustration over widespread corruption and a sagging economy.

Samaras had been foreign minister under a previous conservative administration between 1990 and 1992, when he was expelled from the government for his hardline stance in Greece's dispute with northern neighbour Macedonia.

In 1993 Samaras set up his own party, Political Spring, which he later dissolved to rejoin New Democracy in 2004.