According to an announcement released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos addressed the members of the NATO Parliamentary Committee at 10:30 on Tuesday, 4 November. The subject of his address was “Greece’s Foreign and Security Policy Priorities. Results of the NATO Summit Meeting; the crisis in Ukraine, Greece’s stance on Iraq and Syria.”

The address took place at the Hellenic Parliament’s Senate Hall and Mr. Venizelos made the following statements on specific issues.

On the crisis in Ukraine

The Greek government has a very clear and strong interest in the immediate stabilization of Ukraine. In Mariupol, where there is a large Greek Ukrainian community, we recently mourned several victims of Greek descent. And we firmly support the Ukrainian government and the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

We also believe that the crisis should be resolved through political and diplomatic means, thus rendering it imperative that open channels of communication be maintained with Russia, which instead of being part of the problem must be part of the solution.

And I look forward to Ukraine’s newly elected Parliament contributing effectively to the stabilization of the country and the full implementation of the Minsk ceasefire.

On ISIL

Among the greatest challenges we are currently facing is the crisis in Syria and Iraq, where the terrorist activities of ISIL are bringing unspeakable suffering to local populations and threatening to destabilize the whole region.

At the same time, ISIL stands as a global terrorist threat, due to the organization’s attracting large numbers of foreign fighters from around the world. We must deal effectively with this terrorist threat to international security, stemming the flow of foreign fighters into the conflict region, and blocking foreign fighter’s efforts to re-enter their societies of origin.

The barbaric actions of ISIL and other jihadist terrorist groups, including the systematic persecution of Christians and other religious and ethnic communities, have resulted in the displacement of many thousands of civilians who have fled from their homes.

This dire humanitarian situation and the resulting increased refugee pressure on countries of the region, including Greece, is a catastrophe that gravely concerns us and one that the international community needs to address with the utmost urgency.

Greece is of course participating in the international alliance against the ISIL and the jihadist threat, and we believe that, in this framework, it would be useful to capitalize, in parallel, on the Mediterranean Dialogue: NATO’s political dialogue with all of the states in the region.

On Turkey’s recent provocations in Cyprus

We are concerned at the recent violations of the exclusive economic zone and continental shelf of the Republic of Cyprus. Beyond violating the sovereignty and sovereign rights of a member state of the UN and the European Union – rights enshrined in international law and especially the International Law of the Sea – this flagrant violation of international law is creating yet another front, another crisis, in an already turbulent region, at a time when the Alliance and the international community are and must be focused on the very serious crises and security threats I outlined earlier.
As I have already made clear, we strongly support the Mediterranean Dialogue as a platform for building cooperation and security in the region. This is also the aim of the trilateral cooperation initiative we have embarked on with our Cypriot and Egyptian partners; cooperation that is aimed not only at trilateral synergies in a variety of sectors – energy, delimitation of maritime zones (in accordance with international law and the Law of the Sea), tourism, transport – but also at engendering cooperation in the wider region. Cooperation that will bring stability, security and prosperity to the peoples of the region.