PRESIDENT PAPOULIAS: How are you, Mr. President. You’re bringing lots of news …
E. VENIZELOS: As the Foreign Minister, Mr. President, I will brief you on the visit I carried out with the Prime Minister to Nicosia and, naturally, the trilateral meeting in Cairo. It was my fourth visit to Cairo in 14 months, and what took place was very important. But I want to take a stance on the general framework of the systematic policy we have been implementing for the past 18 months, regarding the delimitation of maritime zones, not just with Egypt, but with Italy, Albania. There is the pending matter with Libya, and naturally there are the exploratory talks with Turkey. These are all part of a unified policy for defence of and capitalization on sovereign rights and exploitation of mineral wealth. And this is something very important.
PRESIDENT PAPOULIAS: Based on the Law of the Sea.
E. VENIZELOS: Always on the Law of the Sea. And the great – if you will – acquis of the trilateral Conference is the invitation we have addressed to all the countries of the region to accept the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and to act within its framework.
PRESIDENT PAPOULIAS: Apart from Turkey …
E. VENIZELOS: The big problem is that Turkey has not signed the Convention, but it now accepts the validity of customary international law of the sea, and that is very, very important.
As the Deputy
Prime Minister, I want to brief you on our plan for exiting the memorandum and
the troika, and for the transition to a new era with security, with defence
against the moves of the market, profiteering. This is a comprehensive plan
that will be presented to the Greek people, who have made many, many
sacrifices. But you will allow me to say that we, too, underwent a major sacrifice, as a political space, suffering the reduction of our electoral power for the national interest. So the Greek people will be called upon to evaluate a comprehensive negotiation, on the one hand, and various ambiguities, uncertainties and insecurities on the other.
And in my capacity as President of Pasok, I want to express my great satisfaction at your being visited by the heads of the parties, almost all of the parties. This shows the importance of the institution of the President of the Republic, beyond your standing as an individual. This means that consensus is needed with regard to the President of the Republic. We cannot play around with institutions. It is of very great importance in our national issues as well as in the functioning of democracy for there to be a certain measure of consensus and cooperation.
November 10, 2014