Maria Spassova

Stoil Topalov

Special GRReporter correspondents

Silvio Berlusconi was the person of greatest interest at the NATO- Russia meeting that took place on Corfu Island Saturday. A year after it was frozen over the crisis in Georgia and South Ossetia, the council restarts its activity. There are a lot of reasons that the media attention is turned to Berlusconi. After all, being himself, he is a quite interesting character. Besides, expectations of hum showing up in Corfu were quite little. And for those of you that are wondering why his presence was needed at the Corfu meeting between NATO and Russia, little knew the answer- because the NATO- Russia council was an idea of Berlusconi himself.

As we can see on the pictures, he had to sweat a little in Corfu. Sergei Lavrov is not an easy opponent. Russia stayed firm on the position that Georgia is its rightful territory and it will not be traded off for the perspective of long-term cooperation with NATO. Kostas Karamanlis is not an easy opponent either- Greece and Italy may share similar interests in regard to European illegal immigration policy, but the issues of distributing the costs and determining the level of participation of the European Union, strain relationships between the two countries.

Otherwise, the official announcements agree on a successful meeting in Corfu. “The NATO- Russia council leaves Corfu stronger,” said NATO Secretary- General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer at the press-conference after the forum. Another evidence is the restarting of the military relationships between the organization and Moscow. Well, this does not deserve a lot of optimism either. “I haven’t heard anything about collaborative military practice of NATO and Russia in Black Sea. The only thing I know is that a decision has been reached for the dialog between the military committees of NATO and Russia to be renewed,” said Russia’s minister of foreign affairs Sergei Lavrov after the end of the meeting.

Of a great interest to the Greek media was the showing up of Republic of Macedonia’s minister of foreign affairs Antonio Milošoski. After the announcement about a failure of the governmental airplane, he was expected to arrive by car. Milošoski, however, arrived on a jet with the name of Republic of Macedonia written on the side. His meeting with the Greek minister of foreign affairs, Dora Bakoyanni is yet to be confirmed. Bakoyanni is going to meet the Turkish minister of foreign affairs Ahmet Davutoglu and, most likely, USA Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg, tomorrow.