Minister of Foreign Affairs
She left the office of Mayor before the end of her term, replaced by acting mayor Fotini Pipili, to become Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece on 15 February 2006 and thus the highest-ranking woman in the history of the Cabinet of Greece. She also retained the position after the 2007 election, managing to be elected as a member of the Hellenic Parliament first among all the candidates in the Athens A' constituency once more. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bakoyannis assumed the rotating Greek presidency of the United Nations Security Council in September 2006, while at a time of international tensions over nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and amidst a fragile United Nations brokered cease-fire in Lebanon.
During her incumbency, she promoted the cooperation in the Balkans, where Greek companies are heavily investing, traveled through the Middle East to help outline solutions to problems and attended meetings of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to discuss developments in the region. She also promoted the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon by the Hellenic Parliament and supported Nicolas Sarkozy's plan about the Union for the Mediterranean, but did not reach a conciliation with Turkey and the Republic of Macedonia over the Cyprus dispute and the Macedonia naming dispute respectively.
Read more about this topic: Dora Bakoyannis
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