Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Greek FM Nikos Kotzias
is on a official state visit in Cyprus, his first one after being re-appointed
to the position of Foreign Minister in September. Yesterday (26.10), Kotzias met
with this Cypriot counterpart, Ioannis Kasoulides, and
Archbishop Chrysostomos II of Cyprus.
After their official talks in
Nicosia, Kasoulides and Kotzias gave
a joint press conference, during which Kotzias talked about the Cyprus
issue as an “issue of occupation, of violation of international rules and
international law”. Kotzias called for
the reunification of the island “in a federal, bizonal, bicommunal republic of
Cyprus” emphasizing that “for this to happen, of course the occupation forces
must be withdrawn, and my views on the guarantees are well known.”
In an interview
to Cyrpus’ newspaper “Phileleftheros” ahead of the visit on Sunday (25.10),
Kotzias said that “attempting to maintain the guarantees means a pretext for
non-solution of the Cyprus problem. A member state of the European Union cannot
be subject to third-country guarantees.”
