But Greek Leader’s Words Speak Louder Than His Actions : Papandreou Assails U. S. Ally’s Policies

The man who is one of the West’s harshest critics of the United States once was an American citizen who served in the U.S. Navy in World War II and had a distinguished career on the faculties of some of the country’s most prestigious universities.

All that after arriving in New York in 1939 as a political exile with $14 in his pocket.

He is Andreas Papandreou, now 65, the first Socialist premier of Greece.

But while Papandreou assails the United States and its foreign policy and sometimes speaks in praise of the Soviet Union, he has carefully avoided taking practical steps to loosen Greece’s traditional ties with the West.

Critics contend that Papandreou’s purpose in part is to divert attention from Greece’s own domestic problems--an 18% inflation rate, rising unemployment and stagnant investment.

Seek Withdrawal from NATO

They also claim it is designed to pacify leftwingers in the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, his political party whose platform states the long-term aim of pulling Greece out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and closing the four U.S. military bases in the country.

Despite Papandreou’s attitude toward Washington, a Greek air base is being readied for use by the U.S. AWACS air surveillance program within NATO and a new agreement is being negotiated for the continued operation of two Voice of America relay stations in Greece that beam programs to the Middle East and the Soviet bloc.

At the same time, Papandreou enjoys a personal friendship with Libya’s Col. Moammar Kadafi and Greece is discussing sales of arms to Libya, which the United States accuses of engaging in terrorism.

With general elections due in Greece by November, few predict that Papandreou will markedly change his ways.

“The Socialists irresponsibly exploit foreign affairs for internal consumption. As a result we’ve earned a reputation as international troublemakers,” Assimakis Fotilas, who resigned as deputy foreign minister last year, said in an interview.

Outspoken Criticism

In recent months, Papandreou has earned some sharp rebuffs from the U.S. State Department for outspoken comments:

--He told his party’s first congress last spring that the United States “is the metropolis of imperialism” while the Soviet Union is “a force that prevents the spread of capitalism.”

--He told a meeting of party members of Parliament last fall that the Korean jetliner downed by the Soviet Union in 1983 was on a spy mission for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

--After an official visit to Warsaw last fall, he claimed that trade sanctions imposed on Poland by the United States and other Western nations were aimed at “destabilizing the Eastern bloc.”

Papandreou maintains that U.S.-Greek relations should be “more equal and more sincere.”

“The American incapacity to understand that Greece has interests which don’t necessarily coincide with those of the United States and a voice of its own on world problems creates difficulties in our relations,” he was quoted as saying in an recent interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram of Cairo.

Greece is heavily dependent on the United States for military equipment to keep the balance of power in its feud with Turkey, a NATO ally but a rival for military control of the Aegean Sea region.

At present Greece receives more than $500 million annually in U.S. military credits.

Papandreou, who also serves as defense minister, recently announced that Greece intends to spend around $1 billion for at least 40 U.S.-made F-16 jet fighters for its air force.

The son of a liberal premier, George Papandreou, he was educated at a prestigious American-founded private school in Athens.

After a brief imprisonment under a right-wing dictatorship in Greece during the 1930’s for involvement with a Trotskyite political group, Papandreou left Greece for the United States in 1939, to begin a 20-year political exile.

He has often described how he arrived in New York with just $14--as poor as thousands of other Greek immigrants, despite his privileged background.

Four years later, Papandreou had completed a doctorate in economics at Harvard University. He became an American citizen after World War II service in the U.S. Navy.

He was a popular economics professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and at the University of Minnesota before moving to the University of California at Berkeley in 1955.

There he became chairman of the economics department and published several academic works described by fellow economists as “highly abstract and theoretical.”

Papandreou served as a consultant to the Justice Department’s antitrust commission in 1957. Among his friends were the economist John Kenneth Galbraith and the late Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey.

After the failure of his first marriage, to a Greek-American psychiatrist, Papandreou married Margaret Chant, a public relations executive from Elmhurst, Ill., in 1951.

Mrs. Papandreou now runs a Socialist feminist group with more than 10,000 members in Greece. Their four children, born and educated in the United States, are all members of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement.