“I will continue to urge creditors to take the steps needed to put Greece on a path towards sustained economic recovery”, he said.
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Obama is meeting with President Prokopis Pavlopoulos as part of his final foreign trip.
The last visit to Greece by a USA president was by Bill Clinton in 1999 – also very close to the November 17 Polytechnic commemorations.
“The more aggressively and effectively we deal with those issues, the less those fears may channel themselves into counterproductive approaches that can pit people against each other”, Obama said.
Things have changed. This time, Tsipras warmly welcomed the US leader and they agreed on a common message: less austerity and more policies to induce growth.
Obama also called Greece a “reliable ally” in its commitment to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, even under tremendous strain from the country’s debt crisis.
“I will continue to emphasize our view that austerity alone can not deliver prosperity”, Obama said, who traveling with Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who was expected to discuss Greece’s persistent debt crisis with officials here.
White House aides had hoped Mr Obama might be able to return to the Brandenburg Gate, where he spoke in 2013, for a symbolic visit on his last trip to Germany, but the visit did not materialise.
Global leaders have expressed concerns over President-elect Donald Trump’s suggestion on the campaign trail that the United States might not keep its current level of worldwide commitments, including to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
Obama continued by noting that he will, “pledge to work with [President-elect Trump] on those things that advance the causes of security prosperity, inclusiveness in America”.
Obama’s visit comes just two days before the country’s main annual anti-American demonstrations, which commemorate the bloody suppression, by military authorities, of the Polytechnic pro-democracy uprising.
Obama says he considered it important to visit the birthplace of democracy.
Paying the first presidential visit to Greece since Bill Clinton in 1999, Obama sought to reassure North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies that Trump, despite belittling the alliance during the campaign, wouldn’t abandon it. Obama said Democratic and Republican administrations had respected North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and predicted “significant continuity even as we see a transition in government”.
Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos expressed hope for policy continuity when the USA transitions to a Trump administration in January. He said that it was a sign people’s lives have been disrupted by dislocation, globalization, and inequality.
“Our argument has always been that when the economy contracted this fast, when unemployment is this high, that there also has to be a growth agenda to go with it and it is very hard to imagine the kind of growth strategy that’s needed without some debt relief mechanism”, Obama said.
MIA correspondent in Athens reports that Pavlopoulos sharply condemned the Macedonian position on the name issue during his talk with Obama. Greece was the entry point to Europe for hundreds of thousands of migrants a year ago. Over 60,000 people are stranded in Greece after their onwards journey into Europe was sealed off this year as borders were shut in the Balkans. Migrants from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa continue to attempt risky sea crossings to Europe.
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About 7,000 people, among them many hooded protesters and members of the Communist-affiliated group PAME, marched through the streets of central Athens holding banners reading “Unwanted!”
