JEDDAH, 25 March — Work on an ambitious Islamic Center project located near the new Athens International Airport is in full swing and it is set to open before the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, according to Greek Consul General Vassilios Moutsoglou.
The project is designed to be a big draw for all Muslims in and around Greece and the rest of the world, Vassilios Moutsoglou told Arab News yesterday on the occasion of his country’s National Day reception at the Greek Cultural Center.
“On March 25, Greeks celebrate the beginning of their liberation war of 1821 that was crowned by success a few years later, leading to the creation of independent Greece,” the consul general said.
“Greece has 250 mosques for its 100,000 Muslims,” he added, saying that there was a continuous inflow of immigrants from Albania, the Balkans and certain Arab states.
A majority of the country’s Muslims live in the northern parts of the country, while the immigrants are mostly found in Athens. He added that the volume of trade between the two countries rose to $967.7 million in 2000, from $350.8 million in 1999.
The trade balance had always remained in favor of the Kingdom. Greece, which imported 98 percent of its oil and oil-derived products from the Kingdom in 2000, is a promising market for the Saudi private sector.
Greek exports to the Kingdom mainly consist of foodstuffs, aluminum products, pharmaceuticals and medical instruments, footwear, electrical appliances and machinery.
“The Kingdom has for a very long time been an attractive market for Greek products and services due to its proximity, openness and longstanding relationship between the Greek and Arab cultures,” he said, adding that the next joint economic commission would be held in Riyadh.
Although Greece has only 800 of its expats in the Kingdom — 80 percent of them in Jeddah alone — they contributed to a number of important technical projects during the Kingdom’s infrastructure building days of the 1970s and 1980s.
