Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis met today in New York with his Cypriot counterparts, Konstantinos Kobo and Jordanian Ayman Al Safadi. In the context of the steadily growing cooperation between the three countries in recent years, the three Ministers discussed on the sidelines of the work of the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly to further promote the tripartite cooperation of Greece-Cyprus-Jordan and to address common challenges.

Messrs. Gerapetritis, Kopos and Safadi expressed their strong concern about the escalation of the crisis in the Middle East, which from Gaza and Israel has now extended to the Red Sea, the West Bank and Lebanon. What is urgent now, the three Ministers agreed, is to prevent the crisis from spreading further, achieve a sustainable ceasefire and contain the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. For this reason, alternatives to the existing ways of channeling necessary humanitarian aid to the region were discussed.

The three Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to respecting International Law and the basic principles of the United Nations Charter and agreed to intensify their cooperation in the fields of economic and trade cooperation.

Finally, they agreed that the next tripartite Greece-Cyprus-Jordan Summit will take place on November 11 in Cyprus.

This was followed by a bilateral meeting between the foreign minister and his Jordanian counterpart.

The crisis in the Middle East also dominated the separate one-on-one meeting of Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Al Safadi in New York. Mr. Gerapetritis pointed out Jordan’s sober and stabilizing role in the region and referred to the excellent bilateral relations between the two countries, which were also underlined during Mr. Safadi’s visit to Athens last June.