Αυτό προκάλεσε ερώτηση της Μαρίας Ψαρά από το "Εθνος" ζητώντας περισσότερες διευκρινίσεις ως προς τις ακυρωθείσεις ασκήσεις αλλά και πως ο ΓΓ του ΝΑΤΟ θα βρει κοινά αποδεκτό τρόπο ενίσχυσης του μηχανισμού απο-κλιμάκωσης.
Μέσα στην απάντησή του, ο Στόλτενμπεργκ κάνει λόγο για περιορισμό των γεωγραφικών περιοχών όπου πραγματοποιούνται στρατιωτικές ασκήσεις με ό,τι κι αν σημαίνει αυτό.
Ακολουθούν, α. η αρχική αναφορά Στόλτενμπεργκ και β. η ερώτηση της κ. Ψαρά και η απάντηση που δόθηκε:
We also addressed the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean. Working together here at NATO, we recently developed a military de-confliction mechanism between Greece and Turkey. A hotline between the two Allies. And the cancellation of specific military exercises. I am committed to strengthening this mechanism further, to build more comprehensive confidence-building measures.
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MARIA PSARA [Ethnos Greece]: Hello and thank you for the question. On the East Med, you referred to the cancellation of specific military exercises. It was not clear to me, you mean the one in October or new exercises, because ‘Naftex’ from Turkey are going on? And you said that you will try to strengthen the deconfliction mechanism. How can this be done in a way that both Greece and Turkey would accept? Thank you.
JENS STOLTENBERG: I mean, those exercises that had already been cancelled and that shows that we are able, when we sit down and work on these issues, to actually build confidence measures to reduce tensions and to establish deconfliction mechanisms. They are in place, they are working. Information has been exchanged, the channels for communications are open. And the examples of cancellation of exercises shows that.
Then, I have told the ministers today that I am ready to further develop to strengthen the deconfliction mechanism here at NATO. It is important that, of course, we can do this because we meet here every day. And we have been able to do this now. But I think also that we can learn something from what we did in the 80s and the 90s, because then we also had a very difficult situation in the Eastern Mediterranean between Turkey and Greece. And then actually what happened was that we saw deconfliction by actually cancelling several military exercises, but also actually limiting the geographical area where exercises were going to be held. I’m not saying that we can copy that today, but at least we can look into what we did a couple of decades ago and see if that can be relevant also today.
At the end of the day, this is about political will and for NATO, of course, it is important to help, to support and to do what we can to reduce tensions, to deconflict, because we are concerned about the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean.