GREEK Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis promised today to extend a wall along all of his country’s land border with Turkey as he opened his party’s general election campaign.

Mr Mitsotakis, who called the May 21 election earlier this week, was expected last night to sign off on his right-wing government’s decision to nearly double the length of the existing steel border wall over the next year.

The wall currently spans 25 miles and the government plans to extend it by about 22 miles in that time.

More than 62 miles of wall will be added to that by 2026, government officials said.

Border security remains a high-profile issue in Greece due to long-standing disputes with Turkey.

Mr Mitsotakis and other officials accused the left-wing opposition Syriza party of trying to undermine the project and block the government’s attempt to obtain European Union funding for it.

“I would like to express my regret that there are political forces in Greece today that are fighting this project,” Mr Mitsotakis told supporters during a campaign stop in Orestiada, a town near the Greece-Turkey border.

European Parliament vice-president Dimitris Papadimoulis, who heads the Syriza delegation in the EU assembly, retorted: “We are not going to tear down anything.”