BARACK Obama has opened his final foreign trip as president with reassuring words about the United States’ commitment to Nato.
As he prepares to hand off to a Donald Trump administration, he said Democratic and Republican administrations alike recognise the importance of the alliance to the transatlantic relationship. Without mentioning Trump by name, he told Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos that a strong Nato is of “utmost importance” and would provide “significant continuity even as we see a transition in government”.
Pavlopoulos thanked him for the US support of the Greek people in a time of social and economic crisis, and said he was confident Trump “will continue on the same path”. The Republican’s election has generated significant unease in Europe because of his tough talk during the campaign suggesting the US might pull out of the alliance if other countries do not pay more.
Obama is making the first visit to Greece by a sitting US president since Bill Clinton in 1999. Security was tight, with major roads shut down along the motorcade route and a ban on public gatherings and demonstrations in areas of central Athens and a southern suburb near a luxury seaside hotel where Obama was staying. Boats were also banned from sailing near the coastline around the hotel.
More than 5,000 police were deployed in the capital’s streets for the two-day visit. Left-wing and anarchist groups have planned protest demonstrations, while an armed anarchist group has called for “attacks and clashes” to disrupt the visit. Clinton’s visit, which came during the height of US intervention in the wars ensuing from the break-up of Yugoslavia, was marked with extensive violent demonstrations.
Obama also met Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, and offered a welcome message of support for the Greeks as they struggle with economic woes and a huge influx of refugees. He pledged to keep pressing his view that “austerity alone cannot deliver prosperity and that it is going to be important both with respect to debt relief and other accommodative strategies to help the Greek people in this period of adjustment”.
Pavlopoulos then hosted an official dinner for Obama at the presidential mansion yesterday evening. Today, the US President is scheduled to tour the Acropolis and give a major speech about democracy and globalisation before flying on to Berlin. From Germany, he will travel to Peru for an Asian economic summit before returning to Washington on Saturday.
Obama said he was looking forward to visiting the Acropolis because “if you come to Greece you’ve got to do a little bit of sightseeing”.
Greece’s government has hailed Obama’s visit as being of “huge importance” for Greece and Europe. The country’s left-led coalition government has been struggling to pull Greece out of six years of a vicious financial crisis that has devastated its economy and left more than a quarter of the workforce unemployed.
Despite the US election, the government has pinned its hopes on the US President to help persuade some of the country’s more reluctant international creditors, such as Germany, to grant it significant debt relief.
Without a cut in its debt, Athens says, it cannot hope to recover economically – an argument backed by the International Monetary Fund.
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