Nikos Dendias to have series of meetings in New York

Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, who accompanied Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on his trip to New York, will participate in the proceedings of the Ministerial Week of the 74th UN General Assembly, which ends on September 29.

During that time, according to diplomatic sources, he will have a series of important meetings and contacts with a number of his counterparts, including Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and an opportunity to exchange views with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during a dinner to be organised by the latter ahead of their meeting in Athens in October.

According to diplomatic sources, the meetings will be an excellent opportunity to highlight Greek foreign policy priorities, but also have contacts with high-ranking officials with whom Greece does not often have the opportunity to sit at the same table, such as emerging Asian economies and Latin American countries. In addition, it will be a particularly useful opportunity to effectively promote Greece's bid to become a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council in the period 2025-26.

The meeting with Wang Yi will be among the Greek minister's first, while he will also meeting with his counterparts from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania as part of a quadrilateral cooperation meeting, and promote Greece's trilateral cooperation partnerships with Cyprus, Egypt and Armenia.

He will also have the opportunity to exchange views with the Secretary-Generals of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and his counterparts from Cyprus, Jordan, Libya, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Brazil and Norway.

Dendias is expected to sign a memorandum of economic cooperation and political deliberations with Indonesia - an emerging economy that has one of the world's largest population of Muslims - during his time in New York. He will also chair an informal meeting of Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) member-state foreign ministers.

Ministry sources noted that Greece, as a member of NATO and of the EU's inner core, is seeking to play its part in regional and international developments, strictly focused on international law and the principle of good neighbourliness.

As a pillar of stability in SE Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, Greece's aim is to steadily and methodically, through a network of bilateral relations and multilateral forms of cooperation, foster growth and prosperity in the wider region, ministry sources said.

They noted that the Greek side will contribute actively to the discussion on major issues in New York, highlighting the Greek initiative for protecting cultural heritage from climate change, and the Greek mission's participation in events on the situation in Syria, on human trafficking and sustainable development.