Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Sunday he will ask NATO members at the alliance’s London summit to support Greece in the face of fellow member Turkey’s attempts to violate international law and Greek sovereignty, notably last week’s agreement with Libya delineating maritime borders in the Mediterranean.
Noting the support to Greece by the European People's Party, Mitsotakis said of NATO that "an alliance cannot stand by indifferently when one of its members blatantly violates international law and turns against another of its members." He said that "the strategy of keeping an equidistance [between Greece and Turkey] blatantly wrongs Greece, which never sought to create tension in the region. But Greece knows how to defend its rights with self-confidence, cool-headedness, and effectiveness."
Mitsotakis said that NATO can’t remain indifferent when one of its members “blatantly violates international law” and that a neutral approach is to the detriment of Greece, which has never sought to ratchet up tensions in the area.
Cyprus, Egypt, and Greece have all condemned the Libyan-Turkish accord as contrary to international law. The foreign ministers of Egypt and Greece, Sameh Shoukry and Nikos Dendias, discussed the issue Sunday in Cairo.
Spokesman Ahmed Hafez said in a statement after the meeting that the two ministers agreed that the Turkey-Libya deal was “illegal” and that Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj doesn’t have the right to sign memorandums with other countries outside (the scope of) the U.N.-brokered deal that established his government.
“We agreed that Mr. Sarraj most likely lacks the mandate to sign (two agreements with Turkey), which anyway function as destabilizing factors in the area,” Dendias said after the meeting. “We also agreed with (Shoukry) to accelerate talks between teams of experts to define and delineate Exclusive Economic Zones between Greece and Egypt,” Dendias added.
