FM meets with Syria's al-Assad
Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis was received in Damascus on Tuesday by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, on the second leg of her tour of the Middle East. A 90-minute expanded meeting between the delegations of the two countries was followed by a half-hour private discussion between Bakoyannis and al-Assad. Briefing reporters afterwards, foreign ministry spokesman George Koumoutsakos, who is accompanying Bakoyannis, said the two sides had an overall discussion on the situation in the Middle East, with the focus on Lebanon, the Palestinian issue and Iraq. Meanwhile, Koumoutsakos declined comment over a front-page report in an Israeli newspaper that Bakoyannis was conveying a message to al-Assad from the Israeli prime minister, merely noting that "Greece does not function as an envoy of another country, but conveys its own message, which is a message of dialogue without exclusions". The spokesman described as "exceptionally constructive" a later meeting by Bakoyannis with Syria's deputy prime minister for economic affairs, adding that the two sides had agreed on the need for further development of bilateral economic cooperation, with emphasis on construction, shipping, transfer of know-how, energy, tourism and agriculture. The next step regarding economic cooperation will be a visit by Greek Deputy FM Evripides Stylianidis to Syria, heading up a business delegation in the near future, Koumoutsakos said. Bakoyannis was also due to have separate meetings later with Syrian vice-president Farouk al-Shara and with Foreign Minister Walid Mualem. In the afternoon, before departing for Amman, the capital of Jordan, Bakoyannis will also meet with Damascus-based Patriarch Ignatios of Antioch.
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