“We have reached an agreement in principle that the agreement has to go through the required steps. So we have agreed in principle (to take maritime border issue to the International Court).  The procedure needs to complete now. The President should issue new authorization for the negotiating team to start work and we should then prepare something called joint agreement,” PM Rama said in an interview with the Greek newspaper “Kathimerini”.

Asked by journalist Pavlos Papadopoulo whether he was ready to sign an arbitrage deal and take the matter to The Hague-based International Court, Rama said this was an example that best shows how he sees politics.

“When this agreement was signed by my predecessor and (former Greek PM Konstantinos Karamanlis and former Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis), I had no idea, no one had any idea what it was. It was reported that an agreement was reached between Greece and Albania, and there is nothing wrong about it. Later, certain people from the civil society, namely a former high military official, started to write very disturbing things. The climate became tense. People in my party said this is a great opportunity to attack. I rejected their idea and I thought the only solution was to take the case to the Constitutional Court, which used to make balanced rulings back then. We did so and the Constitutional Court members decided 9 to zero against the government. Therefore, this was a pending issue. And when I took office, I have proposed PM Samaras and latter PM Tsipras to take the matter to the International Court,” he said.

The government head added that he very much hoped that a final will be reached regarding the maritime borders between the two neighbouring countries.

/k.s/u.sh/