STATEMENT OF THE MINISTER OF NATIONAL DEFENCE NIKOLAOS PANAGIOTOPOULOS AT ATHENS-MACEDONIA NEWS AGENCY
Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos: We had the great pleasure and honour today to pay an extremely useful, essential and beneficial visit, and have a Bilateral Cooperation at the Austrian Ministry of Defence with the respectful colleague and good friend Ms Klaudia Tanner, the Minister of Defence of Austria.
Taking this opportunity, the Defence Relation of the two countries has been reinforced with even more tangible evidence, the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding concerning the Defence Cooperation with my Austrian counterpart.
We discussed a great spectrum of issues, that have to do with the security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean, and mainly the European perspective of the Western Balkans and how our countries may provide support towards this direction, and of course the Bilateral Relations and the strengthening of the Defence Relation with even more cooperations, co-trainings and even joint participation in the “Pesco” European programs, which we discussed.
In total, the climate of the talks was excellent. From the very first moment we have had the feeling that we came to discuss with friends, a friendly country, which undoubtedly has proved its friendly emotions and its solidarity as a European state towards Greece, both during the hardships of this summer with the devastating fires in our country and last year-during 2020, with the migratory crisis on our ground borders mainly, and the visible or rather I would say important presence of Austria, contributing to the “Guards” of the borders in Evros.
The real friendship shows in hard times, as I had the opportunity to declare in my statements as well, and Austria has stood by Greece in hard times and we thank you for this.
Reporter: Minister, has the issue of the Turkish provocations popped up in your discussions?
Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos: In the context of the analysis we made regarding the stability and peace in the Eastern Mediterranean, surely the main subject was the illegal and provocative behaviour of Turkey. As we had the opportunity to state, last summer’s tension may not have been maintained this summer too, but from then on, Turkey’s intensions and especially its behaviour, is a fact and it does not leave a great margin of optimism. I pointed out that if Turkey ever decides to respect the rules of other countries’ co-existence in the international arena, that is mainly International Law and good neighbourly relations, then we have a margin for communication. But when Turkey does not respect these rules, then certainly our own margin of optimism is very small. I wish Turkey operate and behave as the states should behave in the context of International Law, respecting International law and good neighbourly relations, and as I said, then there can be room for improvement. Unfortunately, this is not projected and there are no big margins of optimism, nevertheless, we owe to continue the efforts, but at the same time, regarding the diplomatic effort, we must assure the reinforcement of the total deterrent capability of the Armed Forces, and this is something we do based on plans and a quick pace, especially over the past two years.
