US President Obama’s 36-hour schedule of visit in Greece

The White House released a statement on the official visit of outgoing US President Barack Obama to Greece on November 15. According to mignatiou.com, Barack Obama will stay in Greece for 36 hours and he is scheduled to meet with Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos and PM Alexis Tsipras.

Obama has requested to visit a refugee hotspot, possibly on the island of Limnos, during his stay. Mignatiou.com reports that Obama had initially asked to visit Greece on November 17, but his request was turned down, as it would have coincided with the annual anniversary of the November 17 students’ uprising against the military junta in 1974, an event fuelled with anti-American sentiment due to the support offered by the US to the junta in the past.

The White House statement said the US President is expected to reaffirm the strong democratic values emanating from Greece that have brought peace and prosperity in Europe and the rest of the world, while he will express his admiration to the Greek people and government for their exceptional generosity to the refugees and migrants. The agenda of talks between Obama and Tsipras will include the economic crisis, the Cypriot problem, the Turkish-Greek relations, the refugee crisis and the Syrian conflict.

Diplomatic sources say the relationship between Greece and the US is excellent, pointing to the Obama administration’s full support to Tsipras’s efforts to navigate through the Greek financial crisis in the past, highlighting the central role of the US in avoiding a Grexit in 2015. The Greek side hopes to get a statement by the US President about a debt relief, while Obama has expressed the desire to directly address the Greek people from a hotel.

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