Who and why questions Stoltenberg
A letter sent to the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, on the tensions between Greece and Turkey. Italics by Teodoro Dalavecuras
Jens Stoltenberg's latest outing a few days ago, when he invited Greece and Turkey to find "a meeting point" on the issues of the Eastern Aegean, where Erdogan has long deployed an aggressive tactic against Greece, had created such a Athens as well as annoyance also amazement, so much so that Stoltenberg could not avoid being received on Sunday 19 June by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to try to remedy what could be considered, in the most benevolent hypothesis, a gaffe.
Certainly, however, the unwritten rules of diplomatic etiquette prevented Mitsotakis from expressing the Greek point of view on Stoltenberg's words with the frankness of chance. With an "open letter" published in Kathimerini of the same day, Petros Molyviatis thought of it who, despite signing himself as a "Hellenic citizen", is an authoritative exponent of the Athenian political diplomatic establishment with a past as an ambassador to the UN, NATO and Moscow , three times foreign minister and, in the first six difficult years (1974 – 1980) of Hellenic democracy reborn from the ashes of the military junta, head of the political office of Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis.
“Dear Mr. Secretary General of NATO”, Molyviatis begins “in recent times you have made statements on the crisis that prevails in relations between Greece and Turkey. Apparently these declarations maintain the equidistance between the two countries ”.
"In reality, however, they are unacceptable in form, in substance they favor the aggressor to the detriment of the attacked and ultimately damage the Alliance". And from this point forward the "Citizen Molyviatis" goes down flat.
“The NATO secretary general is the employee of the governments that hire him and pay his salary with their taxpayers' money. It does not shape policies – which are the work of governments – nor does it express positions without the approval of the governments themselves. And it is clear that these declarations have not been approved by the Greek government ”.
“The reason for living of any alliance is evidently the solidarity between the members of the alliance itself. Here, however, we have a NATO member state, Turkey,
– which officially and publicly claims the territories of another Member State, Greece and, specifically, 152 islands and islets of the Eastern Aegean,
– flies over these territories daily with military aircraft,
– has deployed the largest landing fleet in the whole Mediterranean in front of the islands in question and at the same time calls for the disarmament of these islands.
“When you, Mr. Secretary General, invite Greece to dialogue with Turkey to resolve their dispute, you are essentially asking Greece to make its territorial integrity the subject of negotiations with Turkey. And you are asking for it at the very moment in which you represent an Alliance that was formed and continues to exist precisely for this reason, namely the protection of the territorial integrity of the member states ”.
“This is not an equidistant position. It is an encouragement for the attacker to damage the attacked. And ultimately it does not lead to the strengthening of the cohesion of the Alliance but to its decomposition ”.
“Mr. Secretary General, if you are not vested with the power to intervene to correct this unacceptable and unprecedented situation within the Alliance, I believe that the best thing for you to do is to remain silent until your mandate expires. Sincerely, Petros G. Molyviatis, a Greek citizen ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/chi-e-perche-interroga-stoltenberg/ on Fri, 24 Jun 2022 06:28:32 +0000.