Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday he hoped to resolve their historic dispute with neighboring Turkey over the delimitation of their maritime zones before the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague, which has jurisdiction over the law of the sea, AFP reported.

A Greek warship in the Mediterranean Sea Photo: Handout / AFP / Profimedia

“My main goal is to resolve the biggest dispute with Turkey, the delimitation of maritime zones,” Kyriakos Mitsotakis told Skaï the day after meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius.

That would initially mean reaching an agreement with Ankara to allow “the UN International Court of Justice to take over this decades-long case,” he added, referring to the UN judicial body in The Hague.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who returned to power for a second term after elections in Greece on June 25, however, assessed that reaching an agreement with Ankara on this issue “was not an easy task.”

Athens and Ankara have long been at loggerheads over the delimitation of exclusive economic zones and the continental shelf of Greek islands in the Aegean Sea near the Turkish coast, and thus over rights to energy exploration in this area of ​​the eastern Mediterranean.

“Exploratory” talks between experts from the two countries began in 2000 to try to resolve the issue, but were interrupted several times without success.