Talks between leaders of non-Muslim regional countries are last in series of three diplomatic meetings
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will next week head to Cyprus, where he will attend a trilateral meeting with Greek and Cypriot counterparts Alexis Tsipras and Nicos Anastasiades, respectively.
Netanyahu is expected to land in Nicosia on Thursday morning and meet Anastasiades briefly, before they are joined by Tsipras.
The sit-down is the last of a series of trilateral meetings between Israeli, Greek and Cypriot officials, and represents the highest level of summits. Tsipras told reporters last year that the talks could focus on plans for providing Europe with gas from newly discovered fields off the Israeli coast.
On December 16, Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold hosted a meeting in Jerusalem with his counterparts Dimitrios Paraskevopoulos of Greece and Alexandros Zenon of Cyprus, which focused on energy development, immigration, the war on terror, water management and other issues.
“The discussions reflected the common will to enhance even further the partnership between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus in all fields,” a Foreign Ministry statement issued at the time said.
The first of the meetings was held in Athens on November 12, 2014.
Tsipras visited Israel in late November 2015 and met with Netanyahu then, not long after Tsipras was elected for a second term.
The Greek leader told reporters that he and Netanyahu discussed working with Israel to develop and transport natural gas to Europe.
“One of the main issues in our talks today were the opportunities arising in the fields of energy, the fields of energy in the East Mediterranean. We are considering ways on cooperation in research, drilling and transportation of gas from Israel to Europe,” Tsipras said.
The discovery of a large gas field off of Israel is expected to turn the country from a consumer into a supplier, though the government has faced a series of bureaucratic and legislative hurdles to lease the field to an American-Israeli consortium for drilling.
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