The following are excerpts from Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas’s 21 March interview on “Skai” FM with journalist S. Kosioni:
• “Greece is not taking part in operations of a military nature, like the ones being carried out right now, and these are certainly not being carried out within the NATO framework, but we have said that our obligations deriving from the UN Security Council resolution and our contractual obligations are to meet the requests of our friends and allies for provision of facilitations of a support nature.”
• “There are UN Security Council resolutions. The aim of these resolutions is for there to be an end to the violence in Libya, for the violence aimed at the Libyan people themselves to be stopped.”
• “There is of course the potential for parallel consultations via diplomatic channels. We are leaving the channels of communication open, and we, as Greece have taken care to have our own channels, because we are a country in the immediate neighbourhood; we are a country with traditional relations of trust with the Arab world.”
• “The government had a very clear line from the outset, in full coordination with the competent Ministries and Ministers, and this clear Greek position was expressed from the very outset both publicly and to our partners and allies.”
March 21, 2011