Greece Cannot Send Ships To Secure Navigation In Hormuz Strait - Senior Official

Greece Cannot Send Ships to Secure Navigation in Hormuz Strait - Senior Official

Greece has been tangled up in a maritime standoff with Turkey in the Mediterranean and has no spare ships to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, its national security adviser told Sputnik on Wednesday

DOHA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th October, 2019) Greece has been tangled up in a maritime standoff with Turkey in the Mediterranean and has no spare ships to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, its national security adviser told Sputnik on Wednesday.

"We don't have that many [naval] ships and, secondly, we have problems with our neighbor Turkey, so although we would like to send a ship to the Hormuz ... we don't have a frigate to send," Alexandros Diakopoulos said.

The official, who spoke on the sidelines of the Global Security Forum in Doha, added that Greece had the world's biggest merchant fleet and was naturally interested in keeping the strait open.

The United States and the European Union have been rallying allies to send ships to the region after a string of attacks on commercial vessels, which the US has blamed on Iran. Diakopoulos said that Greece would have contributed to the European initiative if it had enough assets.