Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has warned Turkey to stop its naval provocations in Cyprus territorial waters in order de-escalate the tense situation in the eastern Mediterranean and allow for UN-led peace talks to resume.
Speaking in Nicosia on the eve of Saturday’s mini-summit in Cairo with President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, Samaras was quoted as saying that “provocations cannot be ignored, nor can they be rewarded. We hope Turkey will reconsider, to allow talks to resume.”
Anastasiades pulled out of the talks last month when Turkey sent its seismic vessel Barbaros to conduct surveys in offshore areas delineated within the Cyprus Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claiming that it, too, wants to explore for oil and gas in areas already licensed to American, Israeli, French, Italian and Korean energy companies.
During a joint press conference with Samaras, Anastasiades said “there was an agreement on issues of coordination and also for the implementation of specific measures to address the provocative conduct of Turkey. Our common domain are the efforts to de-escalate the tension, and not to provoke further tensions. After all, we are not the ones who engaged in provocations.”
In an appeal to Turkish Cypriots, whom he often refers to as ‘brothers’, Anastasiades said that “the hydrocarbons in the Exclusive Economic Zone belong to the state of the Republic of Cyprus and that after the solution all the lawful citizens of Cyprus will benefit from the income resulting from the exploitation of those resources.”
“Therefore,” he said, “the energy issue must be an incentive for speeding up a substantive dialogue and the finding, at the earliest possible, of a solution which will leave no winners and losers, but which will meet the expectations for the creation of a modern European state.”
As regards the Cairo meeting on Saturday, the President said that “the tripartite dialogue and cooperation are not directed against any country whatsoever, but to the contrary, they promote the application of international law and create a model of cooperation among states of a specific region.”
It is widely believed that the main issue on the agenda of the talks in Egypt will be political stability and energy supply security in the eastern Mediterranean, common combating of the rise of extremist groups such as the Islamic State, and further trade cooperation in the areas of investments and tourism.
Responding to another question, Samaras said that “very soon, the economic crisis in both countries will be over,” pointing out that “Cyprus is already doing better,” while Greece is definitely exiting the era of the memoranda.
On his part, Anastasiades referred to the positive evaluations of the Cyprus economy and said that the revitalisation of the state comes through the upgrades and the revitalisation of the financial system comes through the latest stress tests, which confirm that we have succeeded in that direction as well.
