Obama arrives in Greece for final foreign tour

“People need hope”, Obama stressed in an interview with local daily Sunday’s Kathimerini, underscoring also the need that Greece continues on the path of reforms to exit the seven-year debt crisis and restore sustainable growth.

In brief remarks, Obama quoted Pericles and offered a toast: “To the virtues and values that unite us across a broad sea, may the Greeks and Americans always be there for each other, as partners, as compatriots, brothers, sisters – stin ygeia sas, cheers”.

Barack Obama has launched a defense of American democracy in the wake of Donald Trump’s election victory during a visit to Greece-his last overseas trip as president.

“We saw it in the vote in Britain to leave the EU”, Obama said, referring to the European Union.

Mr Obama said the UK’s vote to leave the European Union and the U.S. vote showed that people generally were now “less certain of their national identities and place in the world” and that had produced populist movements both on the left and the right.

Obama’s trip will be dominated by questions and concerns about President-elect Donald Trump. Obama has attempted to strike a conciliatory tone, insisting Trump remains committed to transatlantic ties and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, despite the Republican businessman’s statements during the campaign. “We have seen it here in Greece, we’ve seen it across Europe, we’ve seen it in the United States”.

With the US presidential election of Republican Donald Trump laying bare frustrations and dissatisfaction in America, Obama said the impulse to “pull back from a globalized world is understandable”. He says that includes the US pledge to defend all its NATO treaty allies.

The U.S. leader will also attend a state dinner Tuesday evening.

“Democracy can be especially complicated. It’s unsafe”, Obama said.

But when talking to heads of state, with different understandings of what just happened and of their nations’ stake in it, Obama is saying, “Do the best you can, try to keep alliances healthy and alive, and we’ll all pray for each other”, says Mr. Jillson.

He said a suspicion of globalisation and elites, wrapped up in issues of religious or ethnic or cultural identity was “a volatile mix”.

“It allows us to correct for mistakes”, he said. “And that will include, frankly, acknowledgement of our election results, the Brexit election results”.

The outgoing USA president arrived from Athens where he had delivered a sweeping speech warning of threats to modern democracy, acknowledging that globalisation had fuelled a “sense of injustice” and needed a “course correction” to address growing inequality.

The last time a U.S. president visited Greece was in 1999; in the wake of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation bombing of Yugoslavia, Bill Clinton was greeted in Athens with riots and banners “denouncing him as a ‘fascist murderer'”.

By Wednesday, speaking from the birthplace of democracy, Obama was also very much the pundit-in-chief.

He pushed his formerly small radical left party onto the forefront of Greece’s tumultuous political scene by telling Greeks tired from six years of financial crisis and falling living standards that he would reject austerity measures imposed in return for the country’s bailouts.

It has expressed the hope that US pressure could persuade some of its more reluctant global creditors, such as Germany, to grant significant debt relief, without which it says Greece cannot hope to recover economically.

“We can not simply look to austerity as a strategy”, Obama said after meeting Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

The government will also be looking for recognition of the country’s role in Europe’s refugee crisis, which saw hundreds of thousands of refugees pass through Greece from Turkey on their way to the more prosperous countries of the European north, and for USA pressure on the rest of Europe to help shoulder the burden. A prosperous Greece would not only be good for the Greeks but good for Europe and ultimately the world, he said.