The Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, has extended an invitation to Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to visit Australia, AMNA has reported.
The invitation was extended during a dinner hosted at the NATO Summit in Madrid where the Greek PM met with Mr Albanese, as well as other foreign leaders including Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson.
Leaders have gathered for the NATO summit in Madrid to promote peace and security. We are united against Russia’s invasion which is causing devastation in Ukraine and adding to rising cost of living pressures around the world. pic.twitter.com/IHkk5GTDpE
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) June 28, 2022
Mitsotakis is set to have a bilateral meeting today with his UK counterpart, and the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand where he will discuss issues of interest, including the Greek element in these countries.
Also set to meet later today is US President and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan told reporters on Tuesday morning about the meeting with Biden, adding that he has ruled out the possibility of holding talks with Mitsotakis.
“A bilateral meeting with Mitsotakis is not possible. I have said so before, which means that you are not paying attention to what we are saying,” Erdogan said before leaving for the Spanish capital.
Speaking on the possibility of reopening communications with Athens amid mounting tensions, the Turkish President said: “That door has closed until they get their act together and when they do, then we can clarify the roadmap and to what extent meetings can take place.”
READ MORE: Will Greece and Turkey face off at NATO?
Just this morning, Turkey backed down on its threat to veto the applications of Sweden and Finland to join NATO and agreed to support their bids for membership.
After four hours of talks between the leaders of the three nations, the Secretary-General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg told reporters: “we now have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO.”
🆕 Türkiye 🇹🇷, Finland 🇫🇮, and Sweden 🇸🇪 sign agreement paving the way for Finnish and Swedish #NATO membership#NATOSummit
— NATO (@NATO) June 28, 2022
Sweden and Finland made the decision to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Erdogan had threatened to veto Sweden and Finland’s application over a series of issues. One being an arms embargo the two Nordic states placed on Turkey over its incursion into Syria to fight the Kurdish YPG militia in 2019 and another being the extraditions of Kurdish figures who had sought asylum in Finland and Sweden.
Mr Stoltenberg said the terms of the deal involved Sweden and Finland lifting their restrictions on selling weapons to Turkey and Sweden intensifying work on Turkish extradition requests of suspected militants.
The Turkish presidency statement said the four-way agreement reached on Tuesday meant Sweden and Finland were “demonstrating solidarity with Turkey in the fight against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations”.
