New Greece finance minister falls ill, resigns

The banker who was chosen to be Greece's next finance minister resigned for health reasons Monday, three days after he was rushed to the hospital, while the country's prime minister was confined to his home, recovering from serious eye surgery.

Greece's debt woes took a backseat to the health problems of the country's five-day-old government, forcing debt inspectors to postpone a visit to Athens and prompting Germany to warn Monday that a European Union summit later this week would be unlikely to produce any major decisions on Greece.

The EU summit is coming just a week after Greece's new coalition government was formed, following months of political turmoil and two inconclusive elections. It was to have been a key test of Athens' hopes of renegotiating some of the austerity measures it has agreed to in return for billions of euros in rescue loans from the International Monetary Fund and other nations in the 17-country euro currency union.

But before this week's summit, international debt inspectors known as the troika -- representatives from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF -- had been due to visit Athens to review Greece's financial situation. They postponed the trip due to the two ministers' health problems.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras accepted the resignation of Vassilis Rapanos hours after being discharged from another hospital himself following an operation to repair a detached retina over the weekend.

Rapanos, chairman of the National Bank of Greece, had been named finance minister last week in the country's new three-party coalition government but became ill Friday before he could be sworn in.

-- AP