Greeks hope Obama visit will help debt relief effort

Well removed from Tuesday night’s violence, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos played host at an evening dinner for Obama at the presidential mansion.

But since the election of Mr. Trump, the trip has become a mission to reassure allies that the president-elect won’t disrupt Mr. Obama’s policies and global agreements.

Police used tear gas to disperse some 3,000 demonstrators who had tried to break through a cordon of police vehicles.

Clinton’s supporters say she faced a hard balancing act: She embraced Obama, hoping to avoid alienating his supporters, while simultaneously trying to acknowledge the persistent economic challenges and the uneven economic recovery.

President Barack Obama is opening a speech in Athens with a tribute to the birthplace of democracy.

And that, in turn, has created distrust between people and their governments, Obama said.

“I know this has been a painful and hard time, especially for Greek workers, pensioners, and young people”, Obama said in his prepared remarks. But he said “we can’t look backwards for answers”.

“In an age where there’s so much misinformation, and it’s packaged well, it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of, you know, a USA official is equated with constant severe repression elsewhere”, he observed.

The KKE said the Syriza-Anel coalition government had “exposed” itself by welcoming the “leader of an imperialist power”, demanding a Greek exit from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union. While in Germany, Obama plans to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Obama said the Greeks can not be expected to bear the bulk of the burden on their own.

Obama’s argument centered on the notion that economic inequality, while a growing problem, can be addressed without a full rejection of globalization.

“The current path of globalization demands a course correction”, he said.

He said: “Now we need to satisfy the people who are fearful, angry or concerned and that’s going to be a pretty big test”.

Obama, who campaigned vigorously for Clinton, opposed those positions and is fighting now to keep his legacy accomplishments on healthcare, climate change, and nuclear diplomacy alive in the face of Trump’s promises to dismantle them.

He elicited nervous chuckles as he acknowledged that he and the president-elect “could not be more different”. A prosperous Europe, he said, was crucial to ensuring the well-being of all democratic institutions.

Some are already unhappy with one of Trump’s picks.

Mr 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”.

Obama had praise for Greece.

Obama entered the complex through the Propylaea and walked along the Parthenon. Demonstrations were banned in parts of Athens, and road and subway stations were shut down for the first official visit of a sitting US president since Bill Clinton came in 1999.

The Greek authorities have taken strict security measures, cordoning off a large part of the city centre with approximately 4,500 Greek police officers deployed across Athens.

Democracy remains the most effective form of government ever devised by man, he said.