the Mediterranean. He was first elected to the Greek Parliament in 1977 for Ioannina, and held his seat continuously through the subsequent legislative elections until his 2004 election as President of the Republic. Under Andreas Papandreou government, Papoulias was deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, from 1981 to 1985, and from 1985 to 1989 and from 1993 to 1996, Minister of Foreign Affairs. During the ecumenical government of Xenophon Zolotas he served as deputy minister of National Defense between 1989 and 1990. During Costas Simitis' first ministerial term, he was for several years, from 1998 to 2004, president of the Permanent Committee of National Defense and Foreign Affairs. Minister for Foreign Affairs: 1985–1989, 1993–1996 In the 1980s, Papoulias played a key role in trying to reach a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He mediated a safe departure of trapped Palestinian militants and Yasser Arafat from Lebanon aboard Greek vessels in 1983. He created diplomatic relations with the Arab world and achieved the normalization of relations between Greece and Egypt and the establishment of tripartite cooperation between Iran, Armenia, and Greece. He held talks with a total of 12 Turkish Foreign Ministers to normalize Greco-Turkish relations. This resulted in the signing of the Papoulias-Yılmaz memorandum in 1988. He supported Turkey's European aspirations conditional on their respect for international law and European Union values. In his term between 1993 and 1996 and particularly at the crucial Essen Summit he played an important role in starting accession talks between the Republic of Cyprus and the European Union. As president-in-office of the European Union and member of the contact group for the former Yugoslavia he worked to bring about a resolution of the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He signed the Interim Agreement with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, aiming at the establishment of better relations between that nation and Greece. He was very interested in relations between Greece and the Balkan states and it was upon his initiative that the first meeting of the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the Balkans was organized in Belgrade in 1988. There, he began talks with Bulgaria and the then Soviet Union on the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline. He was responsible for the signing of the protocol of mutual civil and military assistance with Bulgaria in the 1980s. He restored friendly and neighbourly relations with Albania by ending the state of war between that country and Greece. Papoulias