Greek PM, EC chief to tour wildfire-ravaged regions
Greek PM, EC chief to tour wildfire-ravaged regions
1 September 2007
published by english.people.com.cn
Greece — Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso will fly over many of the country’s wildfire-ravaged regions on Saturday, Minister of State Theodoros Roussopoulos announced on Friday evening.
Barroso will arrive in Athens in the early morning hours of Saturday in order to visit the affected regions, so as to have a personal view on the destruction caused. Afterwards, he will have a meeting with Karmanlis.
Roussopoulos said Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis, after her meeting with her Italian counterpart Massimo D’ Alema in Rome, presented a Greek initiative for strengthening European cooperation in the confrontation of natural disasters, which he said was well received.
Greece has undertaken an initiative for the creation of unified European emergency rescue crews. The emergency squads would involve wildfire-fighting and anti-flood crews.
Roussopoulos said the next step will take place on Monday in Brussels where Bakoyannis will have meetings with her Portuguese and Spanish counterparts and with other counterparts as well as with the European Commission.
