Greek diplomatic sources on Friday were busy “adding flesh” to a brief but high-profile reference by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, made a day earlier in Parliament, to a summit of regional countries to deal with issues such as delimitating maritime zones.
The leitmotif heard on Friday was that “Greece comprises an axis of stability and security in southeast Europe and the eastern Mediterranean.”
Speaking at an off-the-agenda debate in Parliament on Thursday centering on foreign policy issues, Mitsotakis referred to an initiative by Athens for a future meeting of Mediterranean states of the wider region.
In answer to the primary question of “who the participants” would be, the same sources first and foremost referred to Turkey, with which Athens remains at odds over the latter’s mostly unilateral interpretation of international law, it’s now entrenched revisionism and its often-intransigent behavior in the region. Other would-be participants would be Egypt, Libya and Cyprus. The latter also comprises a noteworthy reference, given that Turkey does not recognize the otherwise internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus. Just as importantly, Turkey illegally occupies 37% of the island republic.
Among others, Athens considers a controversial 2019 Turkey-Libya maritime agreement as “illegal” and “baseless”, a view shared by the EU Concil and Egypt. Additionally, Turkey has issued threats far and wide over an ambitious – and bedeviled – project to lay an undersea power cable across much of the eastern Mediterranean seabed to connect Israel with Cyprus and the latter with the Greek mainland.
Besides maritime zones, i.e. delimitating EEZs and continental shelves, Athens wants to broach the problem of illegal migration and the issues of marine protection, connectivity, and civil defense.
Finally, reports have the Greek foreign ministry having commenced contacts to gauge whether such an initiative could take shape and even acquire a permanent nature.
Source: tovima.com
