Turkey, Greece Agree on Steps to Defuse Tension 

Agencies, Arab News

ANKARA, 13 April 2005 — Turkey and Greece said yesterday they had agreed on a number of measures to strengthen bilateral confidence and to defuse tension arising from mutual accusations of airspace violations over the Aegean Sea.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul announced after talks with his Greek counterpart Petros Molyviatis here that direct communication would be established between the two countries’ national air operation centers to avoid incidents in the Aegean Sea separating them.

The modalities of the communication between the Turkish center in the western city of Eslisehir and the Greek center in Larissa would be worked out by military authorities. NATO-members Turkey and Greece are at loggerheads over the extent of Greece’s airspace and regularly trade accusations of violations and harassments.

Athens claims a 16-kilometre air space around its coastline, but Ankara recognizes only six miles, arguing that under international law, Greece’s air space should extend only as far as its territorial waters. Gul added that he had also agreed with Molyviatis on three new confidence-building measures in addition to a set of 11 already in place.

The measures were cooperation between military disaster response units and organization of joint exercises, participation of Turkish and Greek personnel in language courses in military institutions and organization of sports competitions between the two countries’ military establishments, Gul explained. The Greek minister also held talks with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer later in the day.

Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-day visit to Norway ended yesterday with protests from exiled Kurds. Demonstrators critical of Erdogan’s policies gathered outside the Parliament building where the Turkish leader was meeting with Speaker Jorgen Kosmo, and threw eggs at the Turkish delegation as it was leaving. “No one was hit and no arrests have been made,” an Oslo police spokesman said.

Although Norway has twice rejected joining the European Union, Erdogan discussed his country’s hopes for EU membership in a newspaper interview published yesterday.

The European Union is not a “Christian club, but a place where the Islamic and Christian world can approach each other”, Erdogan said in an interview in the Aftenposten newspaper. “Integration is something all Muslims are prepared to do,” said Erdogan, leader of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party.