| Fact Sheet Office of the Spokesman Washington, DC June 13, 2001 Comprehensive Technical AgreementSecretary Powell and Greek Foreign Minister Papandreou signed today the U.S.-Greece Comprehensive Technical Agreement (CTA). The intent of the agreement is to modernize and strengthen the U.S. – Greece defense relationship and lay the basis for a twenty-first century defense partnership. The CTA addresses the status of United States forces in Greece and Greek forces/officers in the U.S. on official duty. The United States and Greece have spent more than two years negotiating this agreement. It consolidates a number of provisions regarding the status of U.S. forces in Greece currently contained in numerous bilateral agreements supplementary to the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and incorporates counterpart SOFA provisions that deal with the status of Greek forces in the United States. The Greek CTA was envisioned as the final piece of three major agreements setting out a modernized defense relationship with Greece. The other two major agreements already in force are the NATO SOFA and the 1990 Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement (MDCA), which updated U.S. basing arrangements in Greece and established the requirement to negotiate and sign the CTA. The counterpart SOFA provisions, incorporated in Part II of the agreement, deal with the status of Greek forces in the United States. Negotiations for the CTA began in March 1999 and both sides initialed a CTA text in January 2000 ad referendum, but several legal concerns blocked final signature at that time. Following further negotiations in both the U.S. and in Greece, these were resolved. |
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