WASHINGTON | US President Joe Biden and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis assured the White House on Monday that the relationship between the two countries had “never been better”.

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The head of the Greek government, received in the Oval Office, told reporters that his visit was “an opportunity to take stock of our relationship which, I honestly believe, has never been better”.

“Me too”, agreed Joe Biden, for whom the partnership between the two countries is “more important than ever”.

The Democratic President said that the founding fathers of the American nation were inspired by the great thinkers of democracy from ancient Greece, while Kyriakos Mitsotakis stressed that American independence had been a benchmark in the fight for Independence of Greece, launched in 1821.

Joe Biden receives the head of the Greek executive to mark, with a little delay, the bicentenary of this independence.

The two leaders must in particular discuss support for Ukraine against Russia, and NATO, of which Greece is a member.

Their meeting takes place when Turkey threatens to oppose the entry into the Atlantic alliance of Sweden and Finland.

Turkey and Greece had promised after the invasion of Ukraine to “focus on what unites them”, but their relationship regularly passes through areas of turbulence, Ankara and Athens regularly accusing each other of violations of territorial waters and airspace.

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