Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, met with his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, for the first time on Wednesday on the sidelines of the recent NATO Summit in Madrid.
According to the Greek PM’s Office, the two leaders spoke about the Greek Australian community and reaffirmed the continued strong bilateral relations between Greece and Australia.
Albanese and Mitsotakis also placed particular emphasis during the meeting on strengthening bilateral economic cooperation and attracting investments from the Greek community in Australia.
Albanese also reiterated his invitation to Mitsotakis to visit Australia.
After the meeting, Albanese said on Twitter it was “good to catch up” with Mitsotakis at the NATO Summit.
Albanese is at the Summit this week after he was invited as part of the first formal Asia Pacific delegation to attend the meeting, alongside the leaders of New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.
So far, he has met with Mitsotakis, as well as the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the President of Poland Andrzej Duda and the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Meanwhile, Mitsotakis has held working meetings with the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, Sweden and Canada.
During his meeting with the PM of the UK, Boris Johnson, government sources said Mitsotakis highlighted the prospects for deepening bilateral cooperation and identified priority areas such as trade, tourism and defence.
Russian invasion and the Aegean hot topics at NATO:
During the opening session of the Summit on Wednesday, leaders also agreed to NATO’s new 10-year strategic blueprint.
The 30-member grouping agreed to formally treat Russia as the “most significant and direct threat to the allies’ security,” condemning its “brutal and unlawful invasion” of Ukraine as having “gravely altered” Europe’s security environment.
According to the Greek PM’s Office, Mitsotakis stressed that sanctions on Russia must be implemented by all NATO member states.
He also reiterated that Greece stood on Ukraine’s side and welcomed the invitation to Finland and Sweden to join the alliance.
Elsewhere, US President, Joe Biden, and Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, met on the sidelines of the Summit to discuss the ‘importance of maintaining stability in the Aegean.’
This came after Erdogan told reporters on Tuesday that he had ruled out the possibility of holding talks with Mitsotakis at the Summit to discuss recent tensions in the Aegean.
According to a tweet by the Greek Foreign Ministry, Erdogan did however have a “brief social encounter” with the Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Dendias, at the Summit.
The meeting also included Lithuanian, Polish and Portuguese Foreign Ministers Gabrielius Landsbergis, Zbigniew Rau and Joao Cravinho. There was no word on what was discussed.
