Greece-Egypt deal on exclusive economic zone posted on UN
An agreement signed on August 6 this year for the partial demarcation of maritime boundaries between Greece and Egypt was posted on the United Nation’s Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea on Thursday, by the organisation’s Office of Legal Affairs.
The deal designates an exclusive economic zone in the eastern Mediterranean, which in turn gives the two countries rights over natural resources in the region.
Greek diplomatic sources said that the importance of this action lies in the speed with which it happened and in the fact that the President of the UN General Assembly is Volkan Bozkir, a Turkish national.
The publishing of the deal by the UN, in combination with the delay in the posting of an accord signed between Turkey and the internationally recognized government of Libya in November 2019 is the result of a long effort by Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, who is in regular contact with the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, the same sources said.
Dendias met three times with the Portuguese top UN official in recent months – twice in Geneva and most recently in New York last September.
This is also the first deal to be published on the delimitation of maritime zones between Greece and a neighboring country in four decades. A similar agreement signed with Italy will be posted as soon as it enters into force.
