February 21, 2020. 20:17
ATHENS
Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said Greece
won’t submit to the United Nations a map outlining sovereign waters after
Turkey did, seeking de facto approval of a maritime deal with Libya, but will
work with prospective energy partners instead.
“A delimitation
cannot be accomplished unilaterally with a declaration, but only with
agreements between states, which is why we are in negotiations with both the
Italian and the Egyptian sides,” the Greek foreign minister told a journalists’
conference on energy security in the East Mediterranean.
He said a
country can not make unilateral declarations although Greece has designated its
Continental Shelf and sea boundaries, which are disputed by Turkey whose
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to begin oil and gas drilling off
Crete as his country is already doing in Cypriot waters.
Dendias
responded to a question regarding what Greece intends to do to counter Turkey’s
submission to the UN of the coordinates outlined in its maritime borders
agreement with a Libyan government the UN recognizes while Greek is working
with rivals there who control the Parliament.
Earlier in
February, Greece’s complaint the deal Turkey made with Libya, dividing the seas
between them and claiming waters off Greek islands, was dealt a blow when the
United Nations’ Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea was set to
post maps outlining the coordinates.
That will be
done even though Turkey doesn’t recognize the UN’s Law of the Sea nor parts of
Greece’s Continental Shelf while hiking provocations in the Aegean as well as
the East Mediterranean where it is unlawfully drilling for oil and gas in
Cypriot waters.
Erdogan,
emboldened by the EU having only a tepid response to drilling off Cyprus and
fearing he will unleash millions more refugees and migrants on the bloc through
Greek islands has become more aggressive.
Turkey said the
posting of the maps by the UN will essentially make the memorandum official and
will pave the way to begin exploratory drilling activities for natural resources
off the island of Crete, which Turkey claims is its Exclusive Economic Zone
(EEZ) – which it doesn’t recognize for Cyprus.
The Greek
islands of Kasos, Karpathos, Kastellorizo and Rhodes aren’t on the map put up
by Turkey and Libya, invisible, which the UN will agree with by recognizing the
maritime deal.
The
Address | Benghazi – Libya