AJCommittee Deeply Concerned Over Anti-Israel Remarks Made By Greek Foreign Minister

American Jewish Committee
Wednesday, 4 March 1998

The American Jewish Committee has expressed "deep concern" over critical comments recently made about Israel by Greece's Foreign Minister Theodoros Pangalos.

In a letter to the Greek Ambassador to the U.S., Loucas Tsilas, AJC Executive Director David A. Harris cited remarks concerning Turkish - Israeli ties, which the Greek Foreign Minister reportedly referred to as "an alliance of wrongdoers." Mr. Harris also criticized Minister Pangalos' allegation of a "double standard" at the United Nations, referring to Iraq and Israel.

"These comments," wrote Mr. Harris, "are contrary to the spirit of Greek-Israeli friendship that many of us, on both sides of the ocean, have worked hard to advance in the last decade."

The AJC letter continued: "Israel has repeatedly stated that its bilateral ties with Turkey are not directed against any third party, least of all Greece. Indeed, the joint military exercises in January, to which Minister Pangalos made reference, also included the United States and were intended as a trilateral humanitarian search and rescue operation.

"Having just returned from meetings in Jerusalem, the assurance that Turkish-Israeli cooperation was not anti-Greek was emphatically -- and repeatedly -- made to me on several occasions. At the same time, as you can readily understand, Israel earnestly seeks friends in a dangerous region -- the Middle East -- and Turkey, which shares borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria, offers one such logical possibility."

Mr. Harris further noted AJC's "distress" over Minister Pangalos' reference to a "double standard" at the U.N. for Israel and Iraq.

"Are the two situations comparable? Can Israel, a democratic nation seeking the security of its borders, be juxtaposed next to Iraq, a tyrannical state bent on aggression against its neighbors and found to have used chemical weapons both against its own Kurdish citizens and neighboring Iran? It ill becomes Greece that such statements are made in its name."

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