Jordan Times
Monday, August 21, 2006
Greek foreign minister to visit
ATHENS (AP) — Greek Foreign Minister Dora
Bakoyannis will visit Jordan this week during a Middle East tour to coordinate
Greece’s efforts to help Lebanon, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
The minister will also discuss a possible contribution to an international
peacekeeping force that would be deployed in southern Lebanon, the ministry
said, adding that details of the trip would be announced Monday.
But state-run NET television said the visit would include stops in Lebanon,
Cyprus, Jordan and Israel. Greece is considering a request to send a troop
contribution to a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, following a month of
violence between Israel and Hizbollah.
Athens sent 97 tonnes of aid to Lebanon during the fighting, and evacuated more
than 2,700 people, using navy vessels, the Foreign Ministry said. Also Friday,
Greece’s Orthodox Church announced that its leader, Archbishop Christodoulos,
will visit the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Saturday to help distribute 80
tonnes of aid gathered by church-run charities to war refugees in Syria and
Lebanon.
On his one-day visit, Christodoulos is due to meet the Damascus-based Patriarch
Ignatius IV of Antioch.