The following are excerpts from Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas’s 21 March interview on “Real” FM with journalist N. Hatzinikolaou:
• “The international community had no choice but to send a decisive message to the Qaddafi regime to stop the violence against the Libyan people, and that is why these operations started.”
• “Greece is not participating actively, with its own forces, in these operations, but it is meeting the requests of friends and allies – as we are obliged to do – for the provision of facilitations of a support nature.”
• “Greece has said this repeatedly and believes it profoundly: full respect for international law is an axis of our foreign policy. So for us it is obvious that we will implement and respect our obligations deriving from the resolutions of the UN Security Council.”
• “The diplomatic efforts to resolve the issue must be continued in parallel. Don’t forget, we have civilians here, and we have the humanitarian aid that the international community has to provide to the Libyan people. This is something that Prime Minister Papandreou stressed in his statement at the mini Summit Meeting in Paris: that we mustn’t put aside our diplomatic efforts; there is the day after, for which we need to prepare very carefully.”
March 21, 2011