By Penelope Galliou

In the great challenges of humanity and especially of Greece focused the Greek prime minister during his speech at the 78th UN General Assembly in New York, with the climate crisis having a primary role and Kyriakos Mitsotakis calling for the creation of a global alliance to deal with it.

In the shadow of the recent apocalypse in Thessaly and the devastating fires in Evros, Kyriakos Mitsotakis sought to prove that the climate crisis is no longer a distant nightmare but a reality that is present and its prevention requires immediate mobilization and vigilance and a “global alliance” because as he said “When we act together we can make a difference”.

“We need to act today and not tomorrow, the climate crisis is here, it is affecting our lives and it is affecting our economy and this reality represents a failure of the European Union, we are spending too little to deal with the effects of the climate crisis and this has to change ” he stressed before the UN General Assembly, calling for common action.

The prime minister made reference to the fires that hit Greece in the summer but also to the floods that followed, describing how “In the summer the European south was hit by fires, floods and major disasters”, noting and making known at the same time the beneficial and life-saving use of “112”. “112 was not in place during the devastating fires five years ago. An entire seaside town was destroyed and more than 100 people lost their lives. We learned from that mistake, corrected it and this summer 112 played a huge role in minimizing of the loss of life,” said Mr. Mitsotakis.

The prime minister also made extensive reference to immigration, pointing out the need for more coordinated cooperation of the international community to deal with illegal immigration. He emphasized that Greece is at the center of the immigration crisis worldwide and underlined the need for both bilateral and multilateral synergies, so that to crack down on traffickers’ rings, but also to create legal migration paths.

“Over the last decade, Greece has provided shelter and protection to hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers. Our coast guard has made enormous efforts to save tens of thousands of lives at sea. I will be clear: Greece will always be an open and welcoming country for those fleeing persecution and violence, as well as economic migrants seeking a new future through legal channels,” the Greek Prime Minister made clear.

From the UN podium, Kyriakos Mitsotakis did not fail – despite the subsidence of the tension – to refer to the Greek-Turkish relations and the chronic bilateral problems, but with a different intensity and extent, after the “fresh” meeting with Tayyip Erdogan in New York and clearly reiterated Greece’s standing positions.

“Our main dispute regarding the delimitation of maritime zones in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean is extremely important, and it remains. It can, however, be resolved in accordance with International Law, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and in the spirit of good neighborly relations”, he said and after adding that “we have made good progress in recent months in terms of normalizing our relations”, he concluded that “it is in our mutual interest to continue on this path”.

The permanent positions Greece and Cyprus repeated from the UN floor and for the Cypriot and its solution.

In fact, after the recent corresponding position of the Turkish president who requested the recognition of the pseudo-crat, Kyriakos Mitsotakis emphasized that the Cyprus issue is the “highest priority” for Greek foreign policy and made it clear that for Greece and Cyprus, which operate in coordination, the fair , sustainable and mutually acceptable solution of the Cyprus issue does not go through two-state approaches.

“Our commitment to the sovereignty of Cyprus, its territorial integrity and the one-state solution, based on a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation is unshakable,” the Prime Minister stressed, speaking of the issue of credibility and determination “to defend the basic values ​​and principles in which the United Nations is based on”.

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