ATHENS: Turkey on Friday accused Greece of shunning dialogue and lying after Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Nato-brokered talks to reduce tension in the eastern Mediterranean could only be held if Ankara stopped making “threats”.

The two nations have been at loggerheads over energy resources in the region since Turkey deployed an exploration vessel escorted by warships last month.

“Greece showed once more than it’s not in favour of dialogue,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.

Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday said Greek and Turkish leaders “agreed to enter into technical talks at Nato to establish mechanisms for military deconfliction to reduce the risk of incidents and accidents”.

But Athens said it had never agreed to the technical talks, which in any case did not constitute dialogue with Turkey.

“Published information claiming Greece and Turkey have agreed to hold so-called ‘technical talks’ on de-escalating tensions in the eastern Mediterranean do not correspond to reality,” Greece’s foreign ministry said.

The Greek foreign ministry stressed that “de-escalation will only take place with the immediate withdrawal of all Turkish vessels from the Greek continental shelf”.

“Let threats go away so that the contacts can begin,” PM Mitsotakis said as he met a visiting senior member of the Chinese Communist party.

Stoltenberg on Friday clarified that his effort was designed “to reduce the risk of incidents and accidents in the eastern Mediterranean,” not address the root of Turkey’s maritime claims against Greece.

“What Nato is doing, what I am trying to do, is not to address the underlying problem, but to deconflict and to try to develop and enhance mechanisms for deconfliction,” or avoiding the massed military forces stumbling into an accidental battle, he told reporters in Brussels.

Such measures were needed “as long as we have so many ships in the eastern Mediterranean,” Stoltenberg added.

“No agreement has been reached yet, but the talks have started,” the Nato chief said.

Wading into the dispute on Friday, Cyprus president Nicos Anastasiades denounced Turkey’s “aggressiveness” which he said masked “an intention to control the whole area.”

“So we are experiencing a growing tension, and the situation that evolves is extremely volatile and worrisome,” Anastasiades said.

He urged Turkey to agree to either take the matter to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, or to international arbitration.

In Ankara, Cavusoglu said Greece did in fact agree to the Nato proposal when it was made.

“Greece denied the secretary general’s (remarks) but the one lying here is not the Nato secretary general, it’s Greece itself,” Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2020