Greece's defense minister today promised «colossal» cuts in military operating costs to help the debt-ridden country emerge from its financial crisis and speed up plans to modernize the armed forces, according to AP Defense Minister Evangelos Venizelos Greece is aiming to slash operating costs by up to 25 percent in 2010 from 2009, instead of the planned reduction of 12.6 percent listed in this year's budget. «That is a colossal amount, reaching the margin of our operating needs,» Venizelos said, insisting that the cuts were not a direct result of the Greek debt crisis and that they would not affect the strategic balance with historic rival Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to visit Athens next month. Greece remains at odds with neighbor and NATO ally Turkey over the divided island of Cyprus and boundaries in the Aegean Sea but has improved ties over the past decade. Venizelos did not give details of how the cuts would be achieved, saying only that results of a major armed forces review would be outlined in «several weeks.» «We are reducing operating costs. ... We are not doing this because of economic pressure, we are doing this because this is mandated by the modern views of military planning,» he said. The minister added that the reduction would not affect arms orders, but implied that Greece's NATO allies remained keen to sell weapons to his government.
