ATHENS – Greece’s New Democracy government has sent a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres rejecting Turkey’s claims to waters in the Aegean and East Mediterranean in a deal signed with Libya.

Greece’s permanent representative to the UN, Maria Theofili, sent the letter, said Kathimerini, but it wasn’t said why she didn’t sit down and talk with Guterres as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis ries to build an international alliance against the agreement.

The letter said Greece rejected any assertions in the agreement “in their entirety,” as Turkey and Libya divided the seas between them and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would have Turkish ships drill for energy off Crete as they are doing off Cyprus.

The letter is a response to the geographical coordinates submitted by Turkey to the UN on November 13, 2019, setting parameters under which Turkey could expand its continental shelf near Greek waters.

These coordinates, said Theofili, “unlawfully define the outer limits of Turkey’s claimed continental shelf, in stark violation of the international law of the sea and the sovereign rights of Greece in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

Therefore, she added, they are “void of any legal consequences. They cannot form the foundation of any legal rights and cannot be invoked against Greece,” the letter said, according to the paper.

She also warned of “other illegal and provocative Turkish acts in the same maritime area, in complete disregard of Greece’s sovereign rights, as well as of those of other neighboring countries, seriously endanger peace and security.”