‘Irritants’ in Greek-US relations gone
You’ve watched the Greek-US relationship over the years. How would you evaluate it now? I think it has evolved a lot since I first got here in 1985. It’s a much more mature relationship, there is greater understanding. I’m not talking about specific issues. There might be a flare-up over this or that, definitely over Iraq, over Kosovo, Bosnia. I’m talking about the larger picture. As I have seen it’s a more realistic relationship, more mature, based on perception of each others’ needs more than it was back when I first got here. There are clearly some irritants that were big then that are no longer there. I remember the protests over the bases, NATO, EU like yesterday. The big base here is where in five months they are going to be playing baseball, fencing and basketball. One base at Souda Bay serves both countries’ interests and its not tremendously controversial as these bases were before. You no longer have the Cold War, which was a dimension upon which so much hung and which was an aspect of the Greek-US relationship basically since end of World War II up to the fall of the (Berlin) Wall in 1989.
