N. Panagiotopoulos was received by his British counterpart, Ben Wallace, at the Horse Guards Parade and inspected a military parade
London, Thanasis Gavos
In the afternoon, the defense ministers of Greece and the United Kingdom, Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Ben Wallace, will be in Portsmouth for talks and the signing of a bilateral defense agreement.
In the morning, Mr. Panagiotopoulos was received by Mr. Wallace at Horse Guards Parade, the historic venue for military parades and official equestrian displays in Westminster, a few hundred meters away from the British Ministry of Defense and Downing Street.
There the Greek minister inspected a military parade consisting of a company of the Irish Guards and the band of the Coldstream Guards, which even played a Greek military march. The captain of the Irish Guards called in Greek to Mr. Panagiotopoulos to inspect the arrayed soldiers.
At the Portsmouth naval base in the south of England, on board the British destroyer HMS Diamond, the two ministers will hold talks to strengthen bilateral defense cooperation and to this end they will sign the so-called Joint Vision Statement.
It is an agreement that formalizes the two countries’ intention to cooperate even more closely on military matters, including joint training of members of the armed forces and joint exercises.
At the same time, a new cooperation framework is defined to deal with modern threats, such as hybrid warfare and cyber warfare.
In the agenda of the talks of Mr. Panagiotopoulou and Wallace also included matters of cooperation in the framework of NATO in view of the meeting of the defense ministers of the Alliance in Brussels next week.
HMS Diamond is the third in a series of Type 45 destroyers built for the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom and entered service in September 2010, based in Portsmouth.
Among other things, she has participated as a flagship in a NATO mission in the Middle East, but also in a British mission in the Far East.
The Greek minister is accompanied by a small delegation of staff and executives from the Ministry of Defense.
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