A closely watched meeting between Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, scheduled on the sidelines of this week’s UN General Assembly in Manhattan, has been finalized for 21.00 (Athens time), or 2 p.m. (local time) on Tuesday.

According to a report in the Monday edition of the Athens daily “Ta Nea”, bilateral and regional issues will be on the agenda of talks. As previously reported, both leaders will be joined by their respective foreign ministers and diplomatic advisers.

The location for the meeting will be the Turkevi Center (Turkish House) skyscraper in Manhattan, as last year’s meeting was held at the UN headquarters, as per the proposal by the Greek side.

According to the “Ta Nea” report, the tête-à-tête comes in the wake of very “brief and measured” recent tension in the Aegean with the exit of the Turkish oceanographic research vessel Piri Reis.

Ankara recently reacted negatively to a declaration by Athens of a marine park – within Greek territorial waters, no less – in the southern Cyclades as well as its continued opposition to a proposed Israel-Cyprus-Greece undersea power cable. Conversely, the Mitsotakis government has clearly ruled out Turkey’s effort to participate in the EU’s SAFE defense funding initiative unless it rescinds a grand assembly resolution (dating from 1995) threatening war in case Greece legally extends its territorial waters in the Aegean beyond six nautical miles.

“The path to broader regional stability passes through agreements between genuine neighboring countries, based on International Law, and not through arbitrary and non-existent memoranda,” Mitsotakis posted on his FB page on Sunday, a reference to a 2019 agreement between Turkey and Libya, which Athens and the EU consider as baseless and illegal.