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| - Greece on Thursday said it was ready for talks with Turkey on disputed maritime zones in the Aegean, weeks after tension spiked between the NATO allies over energy exploration. Turkey last month suspended a search for oil and gas off a Greek island which had stoked tensions over energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. "We await to see if Turkey means what it says, to go ahead as early as this month," Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas told reporters. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told private broadcaster CNN-Turk on July 28 that Turkey was "ready to discuss (all disputes) with Greece without any conditions". Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday said he was "always happy" to discuss the delimitation of maritime zones in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean with Ankara. "We made progress until Turkey cut off the exploratory talks in 2016," he told the Aspen Security Forum via teleconference. But he insisted that Athens would not come to the table "at gunpoint", adding that if the two sides could not agree, "let's go to (the International Court of Justice), let's go to The Hague." "We will respect the decision of the court," he said. Greece claims its numerous Aegean islands are entitled to maritime zones under international law, a position Turkey rejects. Mitsotakis said Turkey is behaving in an "unreliable" manner within NATO and was a "destabilising" factor regionally. He said the alliance's "hands-off approach" in not taking sides in the dispute was "profoundly unfair". "We are not engaging in any provocative activity that could provoke their interests," the PM said. Mitsotakis said he had told Erdogan that he wanted a "restart" in relations as Greeks and Turks were "culturally close" and there is "no animosity" between them. "Unfortunately, I did not get the response I was expecting," the Greek PM said. He cited Turkish jet overflights of Greek islands, a November accord with Libya that "violates" Greek maritime sovereignty, "illegal" energy drilling off Cyprus and an attempt to "weaponise" thousands of migrants and refugees by allowing them to surge to the Greek border in February, he said. Citing military authorities, Greek media reported Wednesday that eight Turkish military airplanes had committed 33 violations of Greece's national airspace. chv-jph/tgb
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