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Friday, November 21, 2014

Greek Foreign Minister’s Meeting with SYRIZA Leader Is ‘Imminent’

Greek coalition government Vice President and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos announced on Thursday that a meeting with main opposition SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras has been scheduled to take place in the near future. The meeting will be held in order to brief Tsipras on national issues, after Venizelos’ scheduled visit to Ankara, ahead of the Greco-Turkish High Level Cooperation Council, to be held in Athens, Greece, on December 5 and 6. The announcement of this meeting comes just a few hours after a long-standing conversation regarding a meeting between Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and the SYRIZA leader concluded in wreck. The canceled meeting’s purpose was to inform Tsipras on the country’s negotiations with the Troika, but SYRIZA voices ruled out Venizelos’ participation in the meeting. “We think that the presence of Mr. Venizelos would be unnecessary… If the government cannot communicate or express itself with a single voice, that is its own problem,” SYRIZA spokesman Panos Skourletis said earlier this week regarding the meeting that was finally never held. Yesterday, in an attempt to contain the temper and addressing the coordinating secretariat of the National Organizational Committee for the Democratic Progressive Bloc congress, Venizelos said that tension was caused on Wednesday due to a news report “that had nothing to do with reality, because there was no plan for a joint meeting between the Prime Minister, the government Vice President and the main opposition party leader.” Regarding the upcoming meeting with Tsipras, Venizelos underlined that “fortunately, I was informed that Mr. Tsipras accepts the invitation to come and be briefed on national issues after my trip to Ankara, ahead of the Greeco-Turkish High Level Cooperation Council in Athens.”


READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com