Sunday 10 June 2018

• The peoples of the wider region are witnesses to the tensions imperialist aggression is provoking daily, which is expressed in the waging of new wars and interventions. The continuous violation of International Law and of the UN Charter can be added to the existing unresolved international problems, as well as the catastrophic consequences which the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have provoked. We demand an immediate end to the hostilities in the area. The drastic and dangerous militarization has made our region a theatre of geopolitical and energy confrontations of our times. The peoples are paying the price of the competition for the control of the energy reserves, pipelines and commercial routes with their blood and uprooting as refugees.

• We denounce the bloodshed and all the foreign interventions in Syria and demand the respect of the territorial integrity, unity and sovereignty of the country. We express our solidarity with the suffering people of Syria who is has been subjected for several years to the military intervention of the US-NATO-Turkey and the Gulf Monarchies, aiming at the overthrow of the country's government and the promotion of the geopolitical and energy plans of the West.

• We condemn the new wave of murderous aggression conducted by the State of Israel against the people of Palestine, which is being cultivated by the inflammatory US policy. We demand the termination of the Israeli occupation and colonization in Palestine, the end to the inhuman and illegal blockade of Gaza, the release of the political prisoners and demolition of the Wall of Shame. We stand in solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people for the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as the capital that will coexist peacefully next to the State of Israel. We call on the EU to freeze the Association Agreement and cancel any kind of inter-state military co-operation with Israel.

• We condemn the ongoing 4 year military raid of Saudi Arabia against Yemen, which has caused one of the greatest humanitarian crises in the world and brought enormous destruction in the country’s already rudimentary infrastructures. We condemn the silence shown by international organizations and the global mass media surrounding the developments in this dirty war and we vehemently denounce the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia by a number of Western countries.

• We denounce the aggression waged by the Turkish state both internally, as well as against neighboring states. We are struggling for a solution of the Cyprus problem that will lead to the termination of the Turkish occupation and division of Cyprus; to the liberation and reunification of the island and people of Cyprus; to the peaceful coexistence of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots in their common homeland on the basis of the agreed framework of bicommunal, bizonal federation.

• We are fighting for the dissolution of all the foreign military bases in the countries of our region, which operate as launching pads for conducting raids and interventions against our peoples. We denounce the use and involvement of the British bases in Cyprus in imperialist raids and the existence of the spying facilities on the island. We are struggling for the abolition of the British bases in Cyprus and the full demilitarization of the island.

• We demand that our region free itself from nuclear weapons and call for the convening of a UN Conference that will proclaim the Middle East a region free of weapons of mass destruction, including Turkey which has nuclear weapons on its territory. We denounce the US decision to unilaterally withdraw from the Iran nuclear program agreement and condemn the cover-up provided to the State of Israel, which has a nuclear arsenal and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

• We call for solidarity and the humane treatment for refugees coming from the countries of the region. We demand the replacement of the military operations to suppress the refugee flows with search and rescue operations in order so that the ongoing tragedies in the Mediterranean be reduced. We call demand from the EU the establishment of legal and safe routes for asylum seekers and a permanent mechanism for accommodating refugees in all the EU Member States, depending on their possibilities. We denounce the "externalization of the control of EU borders" by means of agreements with neighboring states so that the refugees are kept outside Europe by any means.

• We denounce the extensive arms trade conducted by EU Member States to countries at war and authoritarian regimes of the Middle East, an element which fuels or/and provokes the tensions, conflicts and bloodshed.

• We affirm that the peoples of our region have nothing to divide between them. Our common enemy is imperialism which generates wars, chauvinism and militarism. The struggle for the respect of International Law, for peace, for the recognition of the right of every people to determine the future of its country is the path of struggle which unites the peace-loving movements and peoples of our neighborhood.