After signing the accord, King Peter and King George II of Greece spoke to the British press at a luncheon where the two kings spoke of the "Balkan Union" as being open to all of the states of the Balkans. On 11 January 1942, Peter dismissed his prime minister, General Dušan Simović, who proved himself to be an inept politician who was unable to get along with his cabinet, which had been threatening to all jointly resign since late 1941 if General Simović continued as prime minister. The new prime minister was Slobodan Jovanović, a widely respected historian. At the same time that Peter dismissed Simović, he appointed Mihailović minister of war; as Mihailović remained in Yugoslavia, his position in the cabinet was purely symbolic. On 19 January 1942 at the Dorchester Hotel in London, the king and President Beneš together with the rest of the Yugoslav and Czechoslovak cabinets had lunch together to discuss a post-war regional association. Peter in his speech noted that he was happy that two of the men who negotiated the Little Entente, Momčilo Ninčić and Edvard Beneš "are here today" in this room. The plans to ally the proposed Greek-Yugoslav confederation with the proposed Czechoslovak-Polish confederation that Beneš had signed with General Władysław Sikorski, the leader of the Polish government-in-exile, drew intense objections from the Soviet Union which preferred the states of eastern Europe remain separate to keep them weak. As in Yugoslavia, the Greek resistance was divided between communists and royalists, and Tsouderos objected to Peter that his friendship with Beneš and his plans to link the "Balkan Union" with the Polish-Czechoslovak confederation would cause the Soviets to cease recognizing George II as the king of the Hellenes. Tsouderos's fear was that the Soviet Union would recognize the Communist-dominated EAM as the legitimate government of Greece, and for this reason, wanted to do nothing that would antagonize Moscow. It was largely because of opposition from Tsouderos that Peter shelved his plans for a post-war Polish-Czechoslovak-Yugoslav-Greek alliance.