Agency, who signed a co-operation agreement with the Athens News Agency. Furthermore, in June 2000, the eighth Meeting of the Mixed Economic Committee of the two countries took place, and upon its conclusion a Text of the Agreed Minutes was signed. To conclude, Iraq and Greece have almost always enjoyed a friendly relationship. Greece's position in the 2003 invasion of Iraq Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis's declaration on 21 March 2003 mirrored the official Greek position regarding the invasion, as he declares "Greece is not participating in the war and will not get entangled in it."In addition, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou expressed Greece's opposition to the United States going it alone in Iraq. Many other political parties condemned the invasion, such as the Communist Party (KKE) and the Greek Left Party-Synaspismos, who saw the war as proof of U.S. imperialistic aspirations in the Middle East. Despite opposing the war, Greece did agree with the United States policy of disarming Iraq and destructing any WMD, that Iraq supposedly possessed. However, Greece did not agree with Bush's strategy of pre-emptive war as a means of fighting terrorism. By contrast it was in favor of settling the dispute over Iraq by diplomatic means and not by force. Unlike the opposition to Gulf war II, Greece did participate in the first Gulf war, as a means of restoring peace in the Persian gulf, after Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Domestic response Public opinion in Greece was overwhelmingly against the war on Iraq. A poll published on 4 April 2003 showed that 90.7% of Greeks were totally opposed to the intervention in Iraq, while 3.4% were quite opposed to it. Only 1.4% agreed completely with the war and 2.0% agreed to an extent. Many demonstrations took place with people shouting anti-American slogans and marching to the U.S. Embassy in Athens and the U.S. consulate in Thessaloniki. For example, on 14 February 2003 approximately 100,000 people participated in the anti-war demonstration in Athens. In addition, nationwide strikes were called by the two general trade union federations in Greece, namely the GSEE (private sector) and ADEDI (public sector) to protest the war against Iraq. These strikes shut down public services, private companies, schools, universities, shops etc.; in order to give people the chance to express their opposition to the U.S.-led war against Iraq. Greek media The Greek media strongly criticized the U.S. and its foreign policy motivations