N. KOTZIAS: I welcome the friend of our country, and my personal friend, I hope, Riyad Al-Maliki. A friend of our country and representative of a people fighting for their rights.
We have centuries-old political and historical ties, and country’s support for the Palestinian cause is well known. Moreover, we voted in favour of the upgrading of Palestine’s position at the UN and its accession to UNESCO.
I want to say once again that our country, our government and I, personally, firmly support the two-state solution in the Middle East: the state of Israel and the state of Palestine. The two-state solution is a solution that brings peace to the region, takes away the extremists’ arguments, safeguards the rights of Palestine and the Palestinian people, and provides guarantees for the existence of Israel itself.
Moreover, Greece is a proactive member state of the European Union, and I promised His Excellency the Foreign Minister of Palestine that I will start, as of this evening, when I go to Brussels, on the creation of a Friends of Palestine group in the European Union. And as soon as it is created, I hope immediately after the summer to invite him to Brussels, as the group. Also, in mid-July I will be visiting Israel and Palestine, and I hope to have good news from this perspective.
We talked with His Excellency about the initiatives we can take. First of all we look forward to the visit of President Abbas to our country in the near future, the promotion and implementation of a memorandum of understanding on political consultations between the two Foreign Ministries; that is, the upgrading of our cooperation and the creation by the two Ministries of an action plan that includes all the older agreements and the newer ones that are made between the two sides.
As the Greek Foreign Ministry, we decided to issue instructions throughout Greek Public Administration for the uniform use of the term “Palestine” when we refer to our friendly country.
We continue to give scholarships to Palestinian students, and we will increase them to the degree we can right now, and despite the difficulties the country is going through, we have provided financial and material support to Palestine in recent years to the degree that we could.
Palestine is a country that is in our hearts, in our minds. It has followed us since the years of our adolescence and youth as a dream of freedom, democracy and rights, and for me, as the Foreign Minister, it is a great pleasure to have my colleague Riyad, with the wisdom and experiences he has, and that we all know, here at the Foreign Ministry.
Riyad, thank you very much for coming. Thank for the talks and the continuation of our talks.
R. AL-MALIKI: Your Excellency, Mr Kotzias, it is really a great pleasure for me to be here today. The discussions that we have had and the deliberations and the smooth discussion and the atmosphere of friendship and openness made me feel as if we have known each other for a long time. I think, you know, we have transcended time, history, together, and that’s why I felt as if I am really sitting with an old friend, trying to remember old times, but also agreeing on many other important matters, seeing issues from the same eye and trying to look together towards the future: how we could work in order to solve issues and to understand matters much better. So thank you very much for this feeling, for providing the atmosphere and for helping us to be able to realize that together.
Your Excellency, we are here in order to say thank you to Greece for its steadfastness and support to Palestine in different forums, be it regional or international; as you have said, UNESCO, United Nations, General Assembly and many others. But also, I am not only coming here to say thank you, but also to show our steadfastness and support that, as friend of Greece, we want also to show in difficult times. And you always look for good friends at difficult times, and here, even if we don’t have resources, we show friendship.
Ν. ΚΟΤΖΙΑS: You have heart and soul.
R. AL-MALIKI: Absolutely, we show friendship. And we show support, solidarity, understanding, commitment towards Greece, in order to come out of this situation. We pray, we hope that that will be sooner rather than later.
Your Excellency, you gave us the opportunity to speak on different issues and different matters. In terms of our relationship, in terms of how we see the future, in terms of the prospects of renewal of negotiations between Israel and Palestine, in terms of the Greek commitment to be a catalyst, to help, to lend us a hand, and we appreciate that also very much. I thank you also for your commitment to raise the issue within the Council of Ministers in Brussels about the Friends of Palestine, and we always relied on the strong commitment and support from Greece within the European Union, and now outside the European Union, when it comes to speaking on behalf of the just cause of the Palestinians and the right of the Palestinians to have their independent, free state of Palestine. I think this is really very important. We are very appreciative of that issue.
Of course, we have talked about our bilateral relations, and as the Minister has mentioned, there are steps that will be undertaken in order to solidify, to strengthen, to deepen and to widen our bilateral relations in different aspects, to solidify what we have, to widen what we have by bringing in different sectors, to focus our work through our two ministries, and to see if there are various new agreements that we could also bring in that will deepen the relationship between the two countries.
There is a clear commitment on both sides to work together, and there is readiness on both sides to move forward. And we are happy and glad that things will be moving that way. I appreciate very much the fact that Greece welcomes the visit of the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas. Soon we will look into that and we will continue discussing that visit when we receive you, Mr Minister, in Palestine, hopefully next month, to discuss this possibility and to discuss all the other issues pertaining to our bilateral relations.
After such a meeting, I am coming out very hopeful, very optimistic, of course, that things will move forward, and I am looking forward to our next meeting, your Excellency. Thank you very much.
D. BOTONIS (PUBLIC TV): I have a question for the Foreign Minister of Palestine. Mr. Minister, how are you confronting, and how will you confront in the future, the attacks Syria is coming under from the Islamic State? And I say this given the fact that many, many Palestinians live in the wider region. Thank you.
R. AL-MALIKI: You know that in Syria we have about 600,000 Palestinian refugees who have taken shelter since 1948 and found a way to live alongside the Syrians for so many years. ISIL, ISIS, DAESH, the Islamic State, have been attacking the refugee camp of Yarmuk, near Damascus, killing many Palestinians, of course, destroying houses, infrastructure, and so, yes, pinpointing at the Palestinians in particular.
We do feel that we are part of this wider alliance that should really work to defeat this evil, and we are ready to contribute to and to be part of whatever is needed in terms of exchange, of intelligence information gathering, decisions and actions that will safeguard not only the lives of innocent Palestinians living in Yarmuk refugee camp and other areas within Syria, but also how to make sure to defeat this evil enemy wrongly called Islamic State, because what it really intends to do is really to destroy and kill civilian people everywhere, not only in Syria, but also we have seen it in Iraq and in other places.
Mrs S. RIGOPOULOU (Athens Press Agency): Mr. Minister, are you optimistic about the reopening of negotiations following the new government we have in Israel? Mr. Netanyahu has taken some steps.
R. AL-MALIKI: If you ask me if I am optimistic based on what I have seen and what I have heard, I will tell you no. I am not. What we have heard as statements coming from Netanyahu and his other partners in the current Israeli government, they are not encouraging at all that they are intending in any way to move forward on the resumption of talks between us and them, or that they are really committed to peace, stability in the region.
All the statements and actions that we have heard and we have seen since the government has been formed are indicative that they have opted for the other way. You know, run away from their commitments towards peace and try to create facts on the ground to prevent peace and negotiations from being resumed or achieved between us and between them.
But should this really make us surrender to such a destiny and do absolutely nothing? To the contrary, I think we are fully committed as Palestinians, and as long as we have good, committed friends everywhere in the world, and here in Greece Minister Kotzias is a reflection of that, then we have to be optimistic. We always have to see things from the perspective that the international community is not going to allow such a situation to prevail; that the international community will do its utmost to salvage the peace process and to find a way to bring peace instead of war and cooperation and coexistence instead of hatred.
And I do believe that the commitments that I have heard today from Minister Kotzias make me always optimistic that, yes, at the end of this process there is certain optimism, and that really makes me feel that things could be changed, based on such statements and such commitment. Thank you.
June 8, 2015