British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has considered that it would not be "productive" to hold a meeting this Tuesday with his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, after the latter used an interview with the BBC to advocate for the return of the frieze fragments. of the Parthenon found in the British Museum.
This was explained by a Downing Street spokesperson when alluding to the diplomatic imbroglio generated after the Tory leader canceled at the last minute a bilateral meeting that was to be held in the morning with the Greek president, visiting this country, apparently upset with statements made by Mitsotakis to the BBC last Sunday.
"The relationship between the UK and Greece is hugely important, from our work together in NATO, to eradicating the challenges we have in common such as illegal migration and joint efforts to resolve the Middle East crisis and war in Ukraine," Sunak's official spokesman said to journalists who inquired about what happened to the Greek politician.
As this source explained, "when they requested a meeting with the prime minister this week, the Greek government provided assurances that they would not use the visit as a public platform to re-litigate long-settled issues related to the ownership of the properties." sculptures of the Parthenon, which would only serve to distract from the important issues already mentioned.
Guarantees that, according to Sunak's spokesperson, the Greek government has not fulfilled and that for this reason the British Prime Minister has considered that it would not be productive to hold a meeting dominated by that issue, instead of "important challenges facing the Greeks." and the British." Furthermore, he has also claimed that he offered Mitsotakis alternatively to meet with the British Deputy Prime Minister, Oliver Dowden, a meeting which the Greek Prime Minister did not accept.
For his part, Greek Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said that the cancellation of the meeting scheduled in London just a few hours before the scheduled time "is unprecedented."
The 2,500-year-old Parthenon marbles, over which this dispute arose, were acquired by the Scottish aristocrat Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, between 1801 and 1805, when he was ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul - al which Greece then belonged to—and later sold to the United Kingdom, transactions that Greece has described as “looting.”
Athens has claimed the pieces for years and expressly built a new Acropolis Museum in 2009 to demonstrate that it has a suitable place to house this archaeological treasure.
