Greece is preparing natural gas exploration drilling revealed Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during an interview with ANT1 TV, broadcast on Monday evening.
Mitsotakis said that over the next few days seismic surveys will begin for the extraction of natural gas in two plots southwest of the Peloponnese and Crete by ExxonMobil, "something that will contribute to the energy security of the broader area."
Regarding the extension of Greece's territorial waters to 12 nautical miles south of Crete, Mitsotakis said that "we will do it whenever we believe it is the right moment to do so."
On the Turkish-Libyan memorandum, he noted that "no one recognizes it," and he confirmed that Athens would want to approach Libya in order to delimit the EEZ between the two countries, "so that we can explore the prospect of jointly exploiting wealth-producing resources."
Asked about the spying allegations published by Documento newspaper that 33 people were targeted by spyware with his knowledge Mitsotakis responded that there were "absolute lies, without any solid proof, and with no connection to the government and Maximos Mansion."
"I wonder if there is anyone in Greece who truly believes that I was tracking the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of finance...without any evidence or proof? This is a shame and a disgrace," he pointed out.
Speaking to Documento editor-in-chief Kostas Vaxevanis, Mitsotakis said that "he will be proven a danger to the country, if he does not provide real evidence to the justice system to substantiate the supposed 'evidence' hosted in his newspaper."
It is astounding, he added, "that political confrontation has plunged to such a low level," and he went on to say that "I never claimed that there was absolutely no surveillance and a [-n operations] center that handles the Predator software, but that is very different from accusing the prime minister of actually orchestrating this surveillance. I don't know who is doing the tracking -we need to find out, it is certainly not the National Intelligence Service (EYP), which does handle malicious software- and I have no involvement," stressed Mitsotakis, before reiterating that Greece will be the first country to explicitly prohibit the use of malicious software.
