Athens stands firm on EU force
NATO Secretary-General Lord George Robertson and the EU’s top official for security and defense, Javier Solana, met yesterday with Prime Minister Costas Simitis and other senior officials but failed to sway Athens from its objections to Turkey’s having a say in the operations of the EU’s nascent defense force. This disagreement has frozen the establishment of the force. «I came with a message, that we must get these arrangements in place and we must, for the effectiveness of the policy, get them in place very soon,» Robertson said after his talks with Simitis. NATO and EU officials have expressed hope that the issue will be solved before NATO’s conference in Prague in November. The new force is expected to take command of peacekeeping operations in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia when US troops pull out later this year. «We discussed exhaustively the issue of European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), the problem of the EU’s cooperation with third countries – which are members of NATO but not of the EU. It is known that there is a text, the so-called Ankara document, which Greece does not accept,» Simitis said. «I stressed to Mr Robertson once more that we cannot accept this text. Other solutions must be found,» Simitis said. Robertson, who had stated on Wednesday that the need to find a solution was «urgent,» said: «When we have a collective problem, we find a collective solution… What we need to do is to focus on where the problems are and we have to be imaginative and flexible in the solutions that we find.» Solana, who met separately with Simitis, said, «I promise you that I will do my best to find a solution that everyone will feel comfortable with.» Earlier, he said, with regard to the EU and NATO, «we have to be intelligent enough… to avoid friction between two organizations that, without a doubt, have been the engine for the stabilization of Europe in the last 50 years.» Solana and Defense Minister Yiannos Papantoniou agreed that the problem should be solved by the organizations involved and not by individual countries, the Athens News Agency reported. Costas Karamanlis, the leader of the main opposition New Democracy party, said that it would be suicide for any Greek government to accept the Ankara agreement. Athens says that the fact that Turkey will have a say in how the EU force will operate in the Aegean or in relation to Cyprus will be to the detriment of Greece’s national interests. The deal under which Ankara agreed to allow the EU force to use NATO assets has rapidly become a problem between Athens, NATO and the EU. «The problem is caused by Turkey and efforts have to be focused on Turkey to come into line with the principles of the EU,» Karamanlis told a business and security conference in Athens.
