“The crisis must not be an excuse to retreat on national matters”

In the pre-agenda discussion demanded by Samaras, he accused Papandreou of secret diplomacy and warned that he will not accept the crisis being used as leverage or as a pretext for concessions on national issues. “The blackmailing dilemmas and the alleged one-way streets are leading the country to paralysis and society to dissolution”.

Specifically, Samaras:
-   was strongly set against the pooling in the Aegean
-   dismissed the talk about the continental shelf from a zero basis
-   called for the establishment of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)
-   on the Cyprus dispute, he rejected a new Anan plan
-   on Skopje he invoked the success of the country in the summit at Bucharest that contains an erga omnes name without an ethnological determination
-   was set against secret diplomacy, stressing that it “creates more distrust in the country than a good climate with the neighbors.

More specifically, Samaras asked that our country move to the creation of a EEZ and its demarcation from any coastal country that we have an overlap with. He added that Cyprus has done it with Israel, Egypt and Libya and Greece can do it immediately with Cyprus and promote it with Egypt and Libya.

He made it clear that he will not accept a characterization of the Aegean as “semi-closed or enclosed Sea” that subverts the international law and constitutes a self-renunciation of its rights by Greece. Any such agreement will not be recognized by ND, and when they come to power, they will cancel it. He asked Papandreou to show eagerness on the issue of the readmission of illegal immigrants into Turkey, since it has signed the agreement but does not comply.

About the Aegean, he said there is nothing to pool and brought harsh criticism on the PM for his speech in Erzurum before the ambassadors of our neighbors. “When Papandreou was reiterating the known positions of our country to the Turkish audience, their fighters were drilling holes in our air space and that was a blow to the prestige of the country”. He asked what Papandreou and Erdogan talked about and said that such a tactic constitutes secret diplomacy.

He criticized Droutsas' proposal for a Turkey-EU summit saying that “it is a great service to Turkey since it upgrades the country to a strategic partner of the EU”. He said that Papandreou supported the Anan plan as a one-way street while ND refused to succumb to blackmail, the Cypriot Hellenism voted against it and Cyprus was neither destroyed nor kicked out of Europe.

He mentioned Bucharest and said that the red lines in the Skopje issue were drawn with ND’s stance and Greece was not isolated.

Criticizing Papandreou’s government, Samaras said that “as a government, with the memorandum, it accedes to the control of international organizations, something that other countries with similar problems did not do or at least negotiated the terms, as Ireland did”. “We agree with the structural changes but we do not envision any international governance” he said, and added that these outdated ideas are not taken seriously by any country.

The ND president addressed the Davutoglu dogma on Turkish foreign affairs and supported that it creates problems not only with the Arabic world, but also with Israel, the USA, Russia and India too. Ha also supported that the deterioration in Turkish-Israeli relations enhances the prospects of our country for a rapprochement with Israel without deviating from our established position on the Palestinian conflict.