Mallias Urges Athens to quit Interim Agreement
Monday, 12 December 2011
MINA Breaking News
Greece should immediately renounce the Interim Accord, because it no longer serves Greece's interests, says former head of the Greek liaison office in Skopje and seasoned diplomat Alexandros Mallias in an interview with "Athens News".
He says the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Greece violated the accord by blocking Macedonia's NATO accession admission in 2008 could also be attributed to the incomplete Greek defence at the Hague court.
"The ruling weakens, one by one, all of Greece's arguments regarding our relations with Fyr Macedonia, interpreting in a negative way for Greece all the fundamental clauses of the Interim Agreement, including those inserted in the 1993 Vance-Owen draft of the agreement at Greece's insistence," Mallias says, referring to the insertions including restrictions against Skopje laying claims to Greek territory, against hostile propaganda and against usurpation of cultural heritage.
Mallias stresses it would be wrong for Athens to downgrade the ICJ ruling, just as it would be wrong for Skopje to overestimate its significance.
He believes Athens must rethink its strategy, given the fact that the ruling vindicated Macedonia's interpretation of the agreement on almost all points.
"The accord no longer serves the aims that it was designed to achieve. Greece's interests are not protected, so we must inform Skopje that we will withdraw from it immediately, today", he underlines.
As Greek ambassador to Washington, Mallias had recommended in November 2007 that Athens petition the ICJ regarding a series of violations of the Interim Accord by Skopje over many years.
"I advocated this proposal over recent years. The last time I did so, in 2011, then foreign minister Dimitris Droutsas rejected the idea. If Greece had filed its own petition in 2007, developments could have taken a different course," he says in the interview.
Hör es dir mal genau an und hol dir jemanden, der Griechisch kann, damit er/sie es dir erklärt was da gesungen wird.
