Obama arrives in Greece at start of his final foreign tour

The clashes, just a few kilometres from where Greek leaders were hosting Obama at a state dinner, erupted after about 7,000 people, some of them hooded, marched through central Athens and tried to reach the parliament and the U.S. embassy.

Obama stressed the ties of friendship in a brief speech that quoted from ancient Greek statesman and orator Pericles and touched on the Olympic Games originating in ancient Greece.

“This office has a way of waking you up [.] Those aspects of his positions or predispositions that don’t match up with reality, he will find shaken up pretty quick because reality has a way of asserting itself”. Pavlopoulos said that the Macedonian position is undermining its European perspective.

Like in any other countries, the victory of now President-elect Donald Trump had come as a surprise to Greece.

All demonstrations have been banned in a large swathe of central Athens during Obama’s two-day visit.

Tsipras, for his part, thanked Obama for his support over the years and said he was hopeful the U.S. -Greece alliance would remain unchanged.

Obama, who made it clear during the course of the hour-long news conference that he did not view the recent US election results as a referendum on his own tenure or world vision, suggested that targeting specific racial, religious ethnic groups could backfire.

United States Barack Obama has warned political counterparts to listen to the economic fears of their constituents in the wake of Donald Trump’s shock election win.

Obama will be covering an array of topics in his speech – from the refugee crisis and ongoing Cyprus peace talks to the need for continued debt relief and structural reform.

In what many view as a move away from USA internationalism, Trump made a fuss of the money that the USA puts into North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, saying he would not help out other countries in the block had “fulfilled their obligations to us”.

“There needs to be significant change in our party”, said DNC National Finance Chairman Henry Muñoz III, who’s considering a bid for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. And he used the European experiment as an example, even as he engaged in a mission to try to reassure European leaders that Trump’s election would not alter the USA commitment to economic and political cooperation.

Obama should “shine the spotlight not only on abysmal conditions for the tens of thousands of refugees stranded in Greece, but also on the failure of world leaders to adequately address the wider global refugee crisis”, John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Europe director, said in a statement.

He also pledged support for Greece’s economy, as Greek leaders seek a fresh U.S. pledge to help alleviate the country’s enormous public debt, a measure actively sought by the International Monetary Fund but opposed by leading European lender Germany.

Despite many conservative watch groups complaining about expenditure, Obama’s exposure in these countries is said to have raised the level of cooperation between the countries he has visited and America, with the president taking the forefront of enjoying tourist destinations and understanding local culture, according to The New York Times.

The left-wing government in Greece has touted Obama’s visit as a vindication of its efforts to deliver social justice and keep society stable, as austerity policies have led to an economic depression.

Obama is meeting with President Prokopis Pavlopoulos as part of his final foreign trip.

On Wednesday, Obama travels to Germany, where he will speak to the French and British leaders, in addition to close ally Chancellor Angela Merkel. And he played a bit of defense, saying that his agenda over past eight years had dealt with those issues head on and “the country’s indisputably better off”. He says that’s as long as people retain faith in democracy and don’t waver from democratic principles.

President Barack Obama is getting a crash course in Greek mythology and antiquity at the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

Barack Obama has arrived in Greece on the first stop of his farewell foreign tour as president.