Greece “retains the inalienable right” to extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles “whenever and however it deems fit,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Saturday.
“I will never enter into a discussion about issues that Turkey raises and are non-issues for the Greek state,” Mitsotakis said at a press conference on the second day of at the 90th Thessaloniki International Fair, reiterating that the only issues under discussion with Ankara is the delimitation of the maritime zones in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.
“In recent years, Greek foreign policy has undertaken initiatives that no government has had the courage to implement: maritime spatial planning, the initiative for marine parks, for surveying, the strengthening of our deterrent capability,” he added.
Responding on Greece’s rearmament program, Mitsotakis said that while the government promotes dialogue on bilateral issues, the country will not “ask anyone’s permission on how we will arm ourselves.”
Asked if there is a clear timetable to resume work on the planned Greece-Cyprus electricity interconnection (GSI), he said “it is a matter of a few months.”
