N. KOTZIAS: This is my first visit to Palestine, but not my last. I hope to visit again soon. I thank Foreign Minister Riad Al-Malki for his hospitality, and I have to say that I am very glad to be in this very beautiful new building of the international relations and foreign policy of the people of Palestine and their government.
We are friends. We are old friends, and we have always kept solidarity, each side for the other. Greece has always supported the Palestinian case and the just demand of the Palestinian people for a sovereign, independent, viable Palestinian state. Our support continues today.
We have had long discussions in Athens about upgrading the relations between Palestine and Greece, and we continued those talks today. We discussed the situation in the region, the fight for human rights, for peace, for prosperity, for security and stability in the whole region.
We have common interests, we have a common past, we have a common future on these interests.
As you know, Greece supports the two-state solution between Palestine and the Israelis, on all the levels and in all the international frameworks and organizations. We believe that everybody has a right to determine his own identity and to create his own institutions.
Greece is encouraging the involvement of Palestine in all the European Union’s debates and discussions on the peace process. We are supporting the involvement of the European Union in the peace process in this region. And we are working to create much better bilateral relations – we already have good bilateral relations on all the themes and areas.
I bring with me an invitation from our President for President Abbas, and I am very happy to meet this wise man for the first time in my life, today, and to give him the official invitation from the Greek government and the Greek President.
We talked about consultations in the future between the two Foreign Ministries and Riad Al-Malki and myself, and we discussed the developments in the Middle East, and we have common interests in the peace process here in the Middle East.
Dear friends, Riad Al-Malki, dear friends, I’m so thankful for being here in Palestine and having these discussions with you. And I am so happy that I will see President Abbas and give him our invitation.
Thank you very much. Thank you to everybody.
July 7, 2015