Greek Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Dendias said that revisionist forces should be prevented from trying to destabilize the broader region, speaking after meeting with Albania’s Minister for Europe & Foreign Affairs Olta Xhacka at Tirana on Monday.
He added that “we agreed on how to speed up the completion of the technical part, so that we can submit the joint statement to the International Court of Justice in The Hague,” which he visited last week.
Dendias was talking about Greece and Albania referring their issue of the delimitation of the EEZ and the continental shelf to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
The completion of this process is of great importance for Greece, he noted, and he pointed out that “the two countries want to resolve our differences on the basis of International Law and in particular the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS.”
Dendias stressed that beyond this issue being significant for Greece and Albania, “it sends a very important message to all countries: that this is the only appropriate way to resolve differences.”
The city of Tirana is the first stop in Dendias’ visit to the Western Balkans in view of the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) summit that will be held in Thessaloniki in a couple of weeks.
In this context, he expressed the belief that the European perspective of the Western Balkans is “a one-way street for the region, especially in the current situation, where attention to Ukraine allows revisionist forces to try to destabilize the broader region.” He also stressed the need “to work to prevent this” and “to be able to build a European future of peace, stability, prosperity and cooperation in our region.”
The Greek minister also reiterated that Greece fully supports the immediate start of accession negotiations with Albania and North Macedonia. Greece, he noted, is fully prepared to continue to provide technical assistance and “to make every effort to remove the impasse that exists in the negotiations,” which, he underlined, “it is well known that it is not a concern of Albania.”
Dendias also met with His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana, Durrës & All Albania, with whom he said he had a long conversation.
SOURCE; ANA-MPA
