NATO, Greece discuss refugee crisis

By Vasiliki Mitsinoutou

ATHENS

NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg met with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens Friday to discuss the refugee crisis.

"There's been a significant reduction in the number of people crossing the Aegean from Turkey to Greece," Stoltenberg said. "We need to stay engaged."

NATO started operating in the Aegean in March after Greece, Germany and Turkey requested assistance to obstruct the activities of migrant smugglers, along with the Greek and Turkish coast guards as well as EU’s border agency FRONTEX.

"Greece will undertake every effort so that NATO's mission contributes to the solution of the crisis," Tsipras said.

He also noted that there were several obstacles to NATO’s mission that “arise from unilateral claims and positions of Turkey" referring to "demands that are expressed with increasing activity of the neighboring country to our airspace".

Various media reports have indicated that, according to Greece, NATO has not been able to deploy ships in the southern Aegean Sea -- it has in the northern part -- because Turkey considers it to be a demilitarized area. Greece has also frequently alleged that Turkey had violated its airspace.

“Greece will not accept actions which violate or deny our sovereignty” he added.

A quadrilateral meeting between the Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian and Macedonian foreign ministers on cross-border cooperation took place in Thessaloniki in western Greece on Thursday and Friday.

“I think we took a step forward in our cooperation with our northern neighbors,” Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias said Thursday.

“Some here are also invited to Rhodes [an island in the Aegean Sea close to Turkey’s southwestern coast], in the second week of September, where we will host an international meeting with Arab countries on stability and security in the Eastern Mediterranean” he added.

The talks continued Friday on police cooperation and the fight against terrorism.

More than 150.000 refugees and immigrants crossed the Aegean from Turkey to Greece this year according to UNHCR data. More than 850.000 reached the Greek shores in 2015 in the biggest refugee crisis hitting Europe since World War II.