A non-stop parade of events and people
What a week that was! On Monday, the new US ambassador, Thomas Joel Miller, presented his credentials to President Costis Stephanopoulos, who on the same day also received the credentials of the new ambassadors of Korea (Han Tae-Kyu), of Egypt (Magda Mustafa Kamal Shahin), and of Tunisia (Mohamed Bachrouch). Miller is known to us from his previous term as cultural attache at the embassy when Bob Keeley was ambassador and as deputy chief of mission during Tom Niles’s term. He was accompanied to the ceremony by his wife, Bonny Miller, the deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy, Michael Cleverley, together with his wife, administrative adviser Andrea Nelson, and naval attache Admiral Tom Weatherall. Representing Greece were Foreign Undersecretary Grigoris Niotis and presidential secretary, Ambassador Kostis Lilianos. Protocol director Ambassador Ioannis Vavvas had a very busy morning keeping track of the ceremonies, and the 11-car cortege of the new US ambassador. President Stephanopoulos expressed his deepest sympathy over the terrorist attack and for the victims. In interviews over the rest of the week, Miller spoke warmly of Greece’s support in the fight against terrorism wherever it strikes, he said. Also in Athens this week was Yasser Arafat to address the ruling PASOK party congress, sitting by the side of Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who is running for re-election as party leader. Arafat promised that a central square in Jerusalem would be named after the late statesman and founder of PASOK, Andreas Papandreou, which was received with emotion not only by the delegates but by Papandreou’s widow Dimitra Liani-Papandreou and his former wife Margaret Papandreou, the mother of Foreign Minister George Papandreou. Also present was the ever-discreet wife of the prime minister, Daphne Simitis. Also in town earlier in the week was British actor Christopher Lee, familiar to us from his role as Count Dracula, who has now abandoned horror films for comedies and science fiction, such as the sequel to Star Wars, coming soon to cinemas. Christopher Lee was being honored by the Panorama Festival, organized by the newspaper Eleftherotypia, which included the screening of the new film by Joel and Ethan Cohen, a bitter period parody on the old black-and-white films in the style of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock. Lee did not wait for the screening as he had to catch an early plane. All 17 closed-end funds are trading at a discount
