US mulling a move on visa problem
Washington has expressed its intention to satisfy demands by Athens that a visa requirement imposed on Greek citizens visiting the USA be lifted, Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis told Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis yesterday. US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, a former US ambassador to Athens, said the White House is cooperating with the US Congress to address Greece’s longstanding demand, Bakoyannis told Karamanlis upon her return from Washington. Meanwhile, Greek Police Chief Anastassios Dimoschakis boarded a flight for the US capital where he is to discuss the visa issue – and the problem of terrorism – with FBI officials. Bakoyannis told Karamanlis that her talks in the USA had been fruitful. «The trip was very productive, as it allowed Greece’s positions to be promoted over a period of three days,» she said. Greece’s FM also expressed her satisfaction with Burns’s backing for Greece in an Aegean dispute with Turkey. Burns said on Sunday that the island of Aghios Efstratios is not in a demilitarized zone, despite demands by Ankara earlier this month that the island be classified as a demilitarized area. «We are not looking for certification of the Greekness of our islands but (Burns’s comments) have particular significance for NATO’s decisions in view of the particular influence the USA has on NATO,» Bakoyannis said. Following her talks with the PM, Bakoyannis was quizzed about the oceanographic vessel Aigaio, which is to start seismographic research in the eastern Aegean today with scientists from Greece, Turkey, Germany and Venezuela aboard. The presence of a Turkish scientist on the vessel «has no impact on our sovereign rights,» Bakoyannis said in a reference to Ankara’s claims regarding the delineation of Greece’s continental shelf. The government has already given its approval for the vessel to conduct its research in the quake-prone eastern Mediterranean, Foreign Ministry spokesman Giorgos Koumoutsakos said, stressing that those aboard were there «in the capacity of scientists and researchers, not observers.»
