The Maltese and Greek governments are expected to sign three maritime-related agreements within the next two months, Transport Minister Censu Galea and his Greek counterpart, Minister of Mercantile Marine George Anomeritis said yesterday.

The Greek minister is in Malta leading a delegation on an official visit in which bilateral issues were discussed at length.

Mr Galea said the agreements were a maritime agreement between the two countries, an agreement in the field of search and rescue, and an agreement for the mutual recognition of standards of training, certifications and watch keeping for seafarers.

Mr Galea said there was an understanding in principle about these three agreements and there just had to be some technical talks to refine certain issues.

Mr Anomeritis said he was very satisfied with the talks in Malta. He said he was very pleased that Malta would be signing the EU accession treaty in Athens in April next year.

Mr Anomeritis said Greece, which will be at the helm of the EU presidency from next January, would give importance to maritime issues and he hoped that Malta and Cyprus would join soon so that the EU would be the largest shipping register.

Asked about the good and bad experiences Greece has had since it has joined the EU, Mr Anomeritis said: "Greece has only had good experiences with EU membership. All parties in the Greek parliament were in favour of EU membership and membership has been very good for Greece."

Asked what the government was doing so that the Malta register would no longer be considered on the black list, Mr Galea said Malta was committed to adhere to the standards set by the IMO and the work of the Malta Maritime Authority was bearing fruit as the number of ships detained had decreased from 24 per cent in 1995 to around 7.5 per cent this year.

Mr Galea said the MMA was no longer registering ships which were more than 25 years old and some 750,000 tons of ships had been refused. In addition, some half a million tons had been deleted.

Referring to reports by Reuters that two similar Maltese-registered tankers were plying the same route that the tanker Prestige was following when it broke and sank off Spain 10 days ago, Malta Maritime Authority chairman Marc Bonello said the route was used by 25 per cent of ships travelling in the region.

He said there was a misconception that double hulled tankers were safer than single hulled ones. Double hulled tankers were safer in case tankers were involved in minor collisions or if they ran aground, but in cases where ships broke, the number of hulls did not make any difference.

Dr Bonello said the MMA was following the situation of the two tankers in question.

Dr Bonello said Malta had signed a convention which stated that single hulled tankers should be phased out by 2015.

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