Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis yesterday wrote back to PASOK leader George Papandreou and rebutted the latter’s suggestions that he is not taking the fight against corruption seriously enough.

Papandreou recently took the unusual step of sending a letter to Karamanlis to demand the establishment of a parliamentary investigative committee to probe the Siemens bribery scandal.

The PASOK leader asked Karamanlis to support his request for Parliament to be reconvened from its summer recess and a full plenary session held so that the wider issue of party funding and political corruption could be debated openly.

However, in his letter yesterday, Karamanlis described Papandreou as “haste personified” and suggested that setting up a parliamentary committee before the courts finish their probe would only facilitate a cover-up.

“The attempt to continuously cast doubt on public institutions is nobody’s right,” said Karamanlis in his letter. “Everybody must respect these institutions, even the leader of the main opposition party.”

The prime minister reiterated his proposal for an all-party committee to be set up to look at ways of tightening the law on political funding.

PASOK sources said that Karamanlis’s response completely dodged the main issue and was simply an effort to buy time.

Meanwhile, Siemens Greece issued a statement yesterday saying that it is “actively supporting all investigations” into claims that it paid bribes to secure contracts. The firm added that it has introduced a compliance program to ensure that its business practices conform to the law.