ATHENS, December 10. /TASS/. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s visit to Moscow on December 7 was an absolute success, for it laid the basis for further cooperation by the two countries, in particular, in the field of the economy and culture, Greek Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs Giorgos Katrougalos told the Greek radio station Kokkino in an interview. A transcript of the interview was published by the Greek Foreign Ministry on Monday.
Katrougalos said that the meetings Tsipras had held in Moscow "at the summit level with Russia’s Prime Minister [Dmitry Medvedev] and Russian President [Vladimir Putin] were absolutely successful."
Likewise successful were lower level talks, including the meeting of the joint inter-governmental commission, tasked to identify economic goals for bilateral cooperation, said Katrougalos, who co-chairs the Russian-Greek joint commission for economic, industrial, scientific and technological cooperation. Its session took place in Moscow on December 5-6 ahead of Tsipras’s visit to Russia.
"Those meetings were positive, because, firstly, they made our good relations still warmer, though they had been overshadowed by the well-known incident last summer (the expulsion of Russian diplomats and Russia’s retaliatory measures - TASS), and also because they paved the way for our cooperation, in particular, that in the field of the economy and culture, on the basis of new, better principles," Katrougalos said.
Asked if all problems in bilateral relations had been overcome, he replied: "Both sides agreed that bygones were bygones. We believed and still believe that we were obliged to send a message concerning the protection of our sovereignty, but have never regarded it as a structural element, a key element of our disagreements. Our relations, as you know, are traditionally good. We wish to keep them good within the framework of our diversified foreign policy.".