Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos will be in New York from 21 to 28 September, heading the Greek delegation to the proceedings of the 69th UN General Assembly.
On Sunday, 21 September, Mr. Venizelos will have a one-on-one meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, whom he will brief on the main issues of Greek foreign policy. Mr. Venizelos will also meet with the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, and Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides, and a meeting has also been scheduled with the UN Secretary General’s new Special Adviser on the Cyprus issue, Espen Barth Eider.
During the General Assembly’s Ministerial Week, Mr. Venizelos will have a number of bilateral and multilateral meetings with officials from other countries and representatives of international organizations. He will also deliver speeches and interventions, culminating, on the afternoon of Saturday, 27 September, with a speech to the Plenary of the 69th UN General Assembly.
As Mr. Venizelos’ schedule currently stands, in addition to his meetings with his counterparts in the framework of Euroatlantic institutions, he will meet, in chronological order, with the Foreign Ministers of Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, Algeria, Montenegro, Iran, India, Turkey, Brazil, Andorra, Egypt, San Marino, Georgia, and Israel.
Mr. Venizelos will also participate in a trilateral meeting with his Cypriot and Egyptian counterparts, during which they will look at recent developments in the wider Easter Mediterranean region and at ways to strengthen trilateral cooperation.
On the multilateral level, Mr. Venizelos will participate in the coordinating meeting of European Union Foreign Ministers, he will attend the working dinner of EU-NATO Foreign Ministers, and he will take part in the meeting of South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP) Foreign Ministers and the Ministerial Meeting of OSCE participating states.
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Venizelos will also attend a working dinner on the situation in the Middle East, at which there will be a discussion of the latest developments in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Palestine, and he will host a working breakfast for the Foreign Ministers of member states of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), of which Greece currently holds the rotating chairmanship.
Within the framework of the proceedings of the General Assembly, Mr. Venizelos will take part in the Climate Summit, he will speak at the Ministerial Consultation on the humanitarian crisis in Syria and its neighbouring countries, and he will participate in the Security Council Debate on the issue of the participation of foreign terrorist fighters in conflicts. Moreover, Mr. Venizelos will participate in the High-Level Event on the Ebola Virus and a Summit Meeting on “Strengthening Peacekeeping Operations.”
On the margins of his meetings during the Ministerial Week of the UN General Assembly, Mr. Venizelos will also meet with Jewish Organizations of the United States and attend an American Jewish Committee event on anti-Semitism.
Of particular importance are the meetings Mr. Venizelos will have with representatives of Greek American organizations and the one-on-one meeting he will have, on Monday, 22 September, with His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America.
September 19, 2014