Israeli President Shimon Peres will pay a historic visit to Greece in August, online daily Proto Thema exclusively reported citing diplomatic sources. Peres’ visit, the first official visit of an Israeli President to Athens, follows the visit of Greek President Karolos Papoulis to Israel in July 2011.
Peres will meet his Greek counterpart Karolos Papoulias and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Israeli president will be accompanied by some ministers who will hold meetings with their Greek counterparts and discuss issues of mutual interest.
The agenda of the 3-day visit is expected to focus on energy issues, on the Cyprus issue and the Middle-East conflict.
Proto Thema stresses that the talks on energy will be about the exploitation of hydrocarbon in the sea area south of Cuprus and the possibility of a pipleline to Europe transfer via Greek territorial waters. Another possible issue would be the Israeli participation in oil research in Greek territorial waters.
The visit of Peres will revive and “dynamically re-boost” the bilatetal relations as they were formed during the mutual visits of Israeli and Greek Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Geeorge Papandreou two years ago, in summer and autumn of 2010.
The relations between the two countries were kind of ‘cooled down’ in terms of mutual visits due to the political instability and the economic situation in Greece.
So far, there is no official announcement on the visit.
PS Meanwhile, Papandreou is gone, and Netanyahu does not feel politically well neither.