ATHENS: The New Prime Minster of Greece, Alexis Tsipras has paid his first foreign visit to Cyprus being their close ally that has also been effected by the euro zone crisis.
Tsipras met Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades in the capital Nicosia and was to due to address a joint news conference later on Monday.
In a brief statement during a welcoming ceremony at the presidential palace, the Greek premier highlighted the close ties between the two countries.
“Cyprus is always in our minds and still in our hearts,” he said.
The hard-left Greek prime minister will find no ideological common ground with the Cyprus president.
Anastasiades is a conservative who struck a painful bailout deal with international creditors after he took over from Communist predecessor Demetris Christofias in 2013.
He has since fought doggedly to meet the terms set by creditors, despite losing his parliamentary majority amid a prolonged recession.
Tsipras’s left-wing Syriza party swept to power last week pledging to end painful austerity measures after six years of recession demanded by the EU and the International Monetary Fund in return for a €240 billion ($A350bn) bailout.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis was in London on Monday for talks with his British counterpart George Osborne as he seeks to build support for a renegotiation of the bailout in the face of German opposition.
But Greece and Cyprus have a special relationship built on a shared language and culture and it is a longstanding convention that they be the first port of call for new leaders of either country.
Anastasiades visited Athens in March 2013 on his first foreign visit as president.
The two governments have long sought to coordinate their policies within the European Union and share strong misgivings about EU sanctions imposed on Russia, which is an important economic partner for both countries.
