Netanyahu: Foreign Minister Kotzias Nikos, it's my pleasure to welcome you to Jerusalem.
You come here at a critical time for Greece, and I appreciate the fact that you kept this visit despite some rather dramatic events in your country. And I think it demonstrates the real commitment that we have to strengthen the friendship between our two countries.
It's dramatically changed. It has deep roots because Athens and Jerusalem provided the twin foundations of Western civilization, and the idea of the freedoms of the modern world originated in these two cities. Today, we are two Western democracies seeking peace, stability and security in the Eastern Mediterranean. May I add that we also seek prosperity? That's something that's important and we are committed to help in any way we can to ensure your success, not only because of friendship, but also because I think we live in an interwoven world where the stability of one country affects the stability of many countries.
We are also allies in the struggle against the terrorism of militant Islam that afflicts the entire region. It afflicts not only the Middle East and Israel, it afflicts obviously just about every country in the world. Recently we saw an Iranian-Hezbollah terror cell uncovered in Cyprus that had reportedly five tons of ammonium nitrate in one apartment. That's roughly the amount that took down the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. That's just one apartment. But this terror network expands to over 30 countries in many continents and we have just received a report of another Iranian terror cell operating in Jordan that was uncovered. This is one source of the terrorism, the militant Shiites. The second is of course the militant Sunnis, led by ISIS. And then we have a common battle with the moderate Arab countries and so many others who seek to remove the scourge.
I hope that we can discuss today all these issues – our bilateral issues, our ability to enhance our cooperation in many, many fields. And these are challenging times.
They are challenging times also because today we face the possibility that a deal will be signed with Iran, which is the foremost state-sponsor of terrorism in the world. This deal, as far as we can see, comes on almost daily concessions from the P5+1 to growing Iranian demands. Every day, more concessions are made and every day the deal becomes worse and worse. I could say that what we see in Vienna is not a breakthrough, but more like a breakdown, a breakdown of the principles that the P5+1 committed itself to uphold in the Lausanne negotiations.
This deal will pave Iran's path to a nuclear arsenal. It will give them a jackpot of hundreds of billions of dollars with which to continue to fund their aggression and terror – aggression in the region, terror throughout the world. It's something that I think we should work against because when you have such a bad deal that resembles more and more the deal with North Korea, the conclusion is simple. It's been said before by many leaders and I'll say it again now: Better no deal than this very bad deal.
That too affects all our countries. We need to cooperate to seek stability, security, peace and prosperity. And these are the subjects that I look forward to discussing with you and so many other things. This is your first visit to Jerusalem. We always have a special feeling for Greece. I'm proud to have been the prime minister that worked to further our relationship. We reestablished our formal diplomatic ties 25 years ago, but really five years ago we began to cooperate more closely with one another. I visited Greece; you are visiting Israel now and I welcome you in the spirit of friendship, ancient and modern. And we hope and pray for your success. Welcome to Jerusalem.
N. KOTZIAS: Thank you for the welcome, Mr. Prime Minister. I am very happy to be here in Israel, a country with which we have thousands of years of connections, through many common values and visions, these thousands of years, being together in history and, I hope, being even closer in the future.
I am here for constructive talks with you, Prime Minister, as a good friend of Israel. And you know that Israel is a good and important friend for Greece.
In recent years, we have developed bilateral relations, lately in all sectors: security, energy, tourism, economy. I was just discussing, yesterday, with your close adviser about economy. We talked today with your Minister for Energy. And I think that we have very good projects to do together, not only for our generation, but for the next generations, too.
There is an ongoing and in-depth bilateral political dialogue on all the bilateral region security issues. And I always say that we are living inside a triangle of destabilization. It is a triangle with Ukraine at the top, on the left is Libya, on the right side we have the Middle East: Iraq and Syria. And we have to create, inside this triangle a stability and security framework. The relations between Israel, Cyprus and Greece are very important. It is a line of stability in this area. We have a common interest in stability and security, we have some other kinds of thinking about many other problems, but at the core of our beliefs, I think we have the same interests: security and stability in the area inside this triangle.
And we think there is a mutual decision for dynamic development of the strategic cooperation between our two friendly peoples. And always when I see people coming from Israel, I always think, these people, this population, loves Greece so much that we have to learn to love Israel the same way.
Thank you very much. And we are here and I think our discussion will be very productive for the interests of both countries. Thank you.
July 6, 2015