By Antoni Slodkowski
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday that the recently signed maritime deal between Libya's eastern parliament and Turkey was "blatantly illegal, null and void," adding that it "completely disregards the geography."
Mitsotakis, speaking to Reuters as Greece ends its UN Security Council presidency, also called for an urgent "international truce" to protect shipping in the Black Sea after the sinking of a Greek-owned container
vessel on Wednesday.
Libya's eastern parliament last week approved a maritime boundaries deal with Turkey, drawing condemnation from Athens, but also Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as a threat to regional security and international legal order.
"It completely disregards the geography, the reality that there are Greek islands -- they seem to completely disappear in the thinking of Turkey and Libya," Mitsotakis said, accusing them of attempting to create a "fait accompli" that ignores the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said that reactions from the EU and others to the approval of the agreement, originally agreed in 2019, had no legitimate basis, defending Ankara's policy in the eastern Mediterranean.
Since the 2019 Libya-Turkey deal, Greece has awarded a license to a consortium led by Chevron to look for gas off the island of Crete and has sought a separate agreement with Libya on demarcating their maritime zones.
Mitsotakis assured "there's no risk that these explorations will be in any way challenged."
Referring to Libya and Greece as "natural neighbors," Mitsotakis, who first became prime minister in 2019 and is in his second term, urged the African country to negotiate directly with Athens and take the discussions "very, very seriously."
ATTACKS ON SHIPS IN THE BLACK SEA
Mitsotakis, 58, spoke to Reuters after chairing a council debate on maritime security, only hours after a Greek container ship sank after being hit by naval drones off Bulgaria in the latest strike on ships in the western Black Sea this month.
Greek-operated ships are among the world's largest fleets of tankers and are pivotal for trade across the Black Sea region, whose waters are shared by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania and Turkey, as well as warring Russia and Ukraine, which Moscow invaded in February 2022.
"We do need some sort of international truce when it comes to the freedom of navigation," said Mitsotakis, adding that it was of "utmost priority" to allow for exports of grain from the region into the world through the Black Sea.
"Greek shipowners would be the first to resume trading in the Black Sea, also from Ukraine, assuming a safe passage is guaranteed," he said, stressing the rising costs of shipping as chartering and insurance expenses have "gone through the roof."
It was not immediately clear who had carried out the attack, which added to growing concerns about the impact of Russia's war in Ukraine on commercial shipping in the area.
Mitsotakis said that Ukraine was financially dependent on exports of its products: "They had a bumper harvest, but the grain is now sitting in silos, in danger of rotting."
"Unfortunately, for the moment, Russia doesn't seem to be interested in engaging in a substantive discussion," he said.
RED SEA SECURITY, RUSSIA
Mitsotakis also called on the European Union to bolster its naval mission to protect shipping in the Red Sea called Aspides, which was launched in 2024 to protect from attacks by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis.
Intensifying hostilities between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia have disrupted oil supplies and heightened the risk of a wider regional conflict, eight months since the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
"My argument is simple: the European Union has an interest in having a concrete presence with hard assets in this part of the world, and we need more countries to participate in Aspides," Mitsotakis told Reuters.
He said Greece, Italy and France have deployed "assets" as part of the mission and that was "clearly not enough." Diplomats told Reuters as of late September there were six warships operating as part of the operation.
The Houthis said this week they had attacked Saudi military aircraft and repelled an advance by Saudi-backed forces near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, an important Red Sea shipping route.
"If we really want to send the message also to the Gulf countries that we take their security seriously, but we also protect the critical arteries and waterways that are absolutely indispensable for European trade, we should be willing to deploy more assets to this part of the world," Mitsotakis said.
Asked about US President Donald Trump's move earlier this month to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports, Mitsotakis reaffirmed Greek support for sanctions on Moscow.
"We believe that we need to put economic pressure and impose more financial pain on Russia to send a very clear signal that as long as they prolong this war, they will suffer very specific economic consequences," he said.
(Reporting by Antoni Slodkowski; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
