Common consensus that Macedonia and Greece should develop cooperation in all fields, regardless of the name dispute, is the outcome of today’s meeting between Ambassador Darko Angelov and Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kodzias. New Macedonian Ambassador to liaison office in Athens this afternoon met with the new Greek foreign minister at the new Government of Alexis Tsipras. The first protocol meeting was mainly an opportunity the new ambassador and Kodzias, who took over the ministry from Evangelos Venizelos just a few weeks ago, to get to know each other.
The meeting went positively and in a pleasant atmosphere.
– The meeting went in a positive atmosphere, used for mutual understanding of the new minister with a new ambassador. We exchanged mutual understanding and agreed that, regardless of the existing key issue which will be discussed in the previous format, the two countries should intensify cooperation in more areas and more social fields – stated Angelov for META news agency after the meeting.
The positive climate of the meeting and the will of the Greek side to deepen cooperation, along with the rapid acceptance of the Angelov in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, shortly after coming to power of SYRIZA, created initial encouraging signals that it could be an improvement in the communication and cooperation between both sides. While it is too early to give an assessment of the direction in which the relations and communication with the new Greek Government are going to develop, but this development can be assessed as positive only if we consider that the communication between the two countries has long been frozen due to sharp disagreements over the name dispute.
Angelov is one of the first ambassadors who met with Kodzias after he took over the function from former foreign minister. Since taking office, Kodzias met with the ambassadors of the United States, Germany, Ukraine and Turkey. In January, just before the Greek parliamentary elections, Angelov met with former Deputy Minister for European Affairs Dimitris Kourkoulas.
