Sunak canceling meeting with Mitsotakis ‘definitely a huge diplomatic blunder’
The atmosphere at the event to mark the creation of the Seferis Office and the Roderick Beaton Reading Room at the Greek Embassy in London last Monday afternoon was wonderful and worthy of Greek-British friendship. Suddenly, “after the speeches, the atmosphere changed. The room went cold, we were all surprised,” prominent writer Victoria Hislop, who was at the embassy, told Kathimerini. The reason was UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s sudden decision to cancel his meeting with his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who was also attending the event. In addition to the rude, disrespectful and shocking nature of the meeting’s meeting cancellation, Hislop also pointed out that Sunak himself had not publicly explained his decision.
The British media were also surprised the next day, the author continued, which, combined with the sentiment of British public opinion in favor of reuniting the Parthenon Marbles could make Sunak regret his decision. In any case, “it shows incredible weakness [on Sunak’s part], that he wasn’t prepared to even have a discussion about the issue. But all politicians, if they want to make progress on any issue, start by sitting down and discussing with each other as equals,” Hislop added.
‘In his own, inelegant way, [Sunak] managed to place once more the issue of the Parthenon Marbles high on the agenda of the British media’
Roderick Beaton, a retired professor of modern Greek and Byzantine history, language and culture, avoided commenting about the marbles. “But regarding Sunak’s decision to cancel the meeting, I have an opinion and I say it out loud: In plain terms, I find it outrageous,” he said. “In more formal terms, this is definitely a huge diplomatic blunder, which for me remains, for now at least, inexplicable. There may be something lurking in the background that we don’t know, but from all the statements that are circulating I can’t understand the decision of the prime minister of Britain.”
Janet Suzman, chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, believes that Britain is “isolated” in its positions on the marbles. “The present Conservative government’s truly shocking disrespect of a fellow European prime minister can only serve to weaken its ‘case’ for retention,” she told Kathimerini.
“Sunak ducking out of a scheduled meeting at the last minute leads one to think that at best he felt himself unready to state a cogent case, and at worst that his obduracy could have a more crass political basis and might appeal to the far right of his party, for whom Britain can have done no wrong in all its colonial days.”
Irini Stamatoudi, professor of intellectual property law and cultural heritage law at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, said Sunak “gave us a gift.”
“In his own, inelegant way, he managed to place once more the issue of the Parthenon Marbles high on the agenda of the British media. I personally consider the incident to be isolated, as it concerns Sunak individually and finds no basis either in British public opinion or in the British press,” she told Kathimerini. “This move by the British prime minister isolates him both from public sentiment and from the fair demands of the international community for the repatriation of important cultural assets, a prominent case of which are the Parthenon Marbles.”
