President Donald Trump has invited Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to Washington for the first meeting of his so-called “Peace Council”.
The meeting is scheduled for 19 February and will focus on Gaza. Despite refusals from most EU member states — with the exception of Hungary and Bulgaria — the US president has gone ahead with issuing invitations, hoping some capitals will reconsider.
A US official confirmed to Hellas Journal that invitations have been sent to the leaders of Cyprus and Greece. Both Christodoulides and Mitsotakis are expected to decide in the coming days whether they will accept.
Athens is currently assessing the invitation. According to information cited, Greece has been asked to take part in a session of the “Board of Peace” dealing with the implementation of the second phase of the peace plan for Gaza’s reconstruction, due to take place in Washington later this month.
The same report says that, besides Greece and Cyprus, invitations were sent within the EU to Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Bulgaria, Hungary and Sweden.
Outside the EU, invitations have gone to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Turkey, South Korea, Japan, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, India, Australia, Belarus and Norway.
The Peace Council meeting will take place on the 19th, but attention is already focused on whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will sit at the same table.
Netanyahu had initially scheduled a visit to the White House one day earlier and has not publicly said whether he will attend Trump’s Peace Council the following day. He has, however, decided to change the date of his visit and will now meet Trump this coming Wednesday, the 11th.
