Greece's embattled Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis called for an overhaul of the state machinery in response to this summer's fires.

"The lessons from the last few days of the crisis reinforce my belief in the need for reforms to create a more modern, efficient and credible state," he said in a media interview on Sunday, referring to the blazes which have ravaged the country since August 24.

Greek firefighters continued to battle flames around Mount Parnon near the town of Sparta in the Peloponnese peninsula on Sunday evening, though populated areas were not threatened.

At the first light of day, four planes and a helicopter were dispatched to the area, which has burned for more than a week.

Two other planes and three helicopters attempted to fight blazes still active in Arcadia and Messenia in the peninsula. Those fires have already destroyed thousands of hectares (acres) and were nearly under control.

Three other fires which broke out nine days ago in the island of Evia were still burning but under partial control.

"The situation has clearly improved on Sunday," fire service spokesman Nikos Diamandis said.

Karamanlis' conservative government has confirmed that a general election scheduled for September 16 will go ahead despite the tragedy.

The opposition Socialists (PASOK) have roundly attacked the government's handling of the fires. Before the tragedy, the prime minister had appeared set for an easy electoral win.

Some 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of forest and farmland have been destroyed, sparking widespread anger that the government did not intervene soon enough and at the scale required.

The official toll climbed to 64 after a man died of serious burns in the fire-ravaged western Peloponnese region, the health ministry said in a statement.

"This day will be difficult again because we expect strong winds in the country's west, including the Peloponnese," a spokesman for the fire service had said, but underlined that temperatures were expected to be lower in the Athens region.

Meanwhile, Karamanlis reiterated his view that the infernos -- which plunged Greece into a national disaster as villages were consumed by fast-moving flames -- could not all have been accidental.

"So many fires, at the same time in different places cannot be coincidental," he said, but hastily added that "the state machinery did its best to face the situation without precedence."

Karamanlis said action would be taken against "anyone who started the fires on purpose."

But he said no special budgetary measures would be needed to deal with the fall-out of the fires because the country's economy was healthy and growth strong.

The economic cost "was controllable and limited," Karamanlis said.

The tragedy has shown up Greece's inability to deal with a disaster of such magnitude and to draw up contingency fire-fighting plans following a baking and particularly dry summer.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso pledged EU support for Greece on Saturday after touring hard-hit areas by helicopter.

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