WASHINGTON, 15 October 2021, (TON): Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, has said that it is good to see everyone here, and it is especially a pleasure for me to welcome our friends here from the Hellenic Republic of Greece for the third U.S.-Greece Strategic Dialogue. Nikos, to you, to all of your colleagues, again, welcome. It’s so good to have you here.

This strategic dialogue is a signal of our shared commitment to deepen our partnership on the most urgent challenges that are facing both of our countries but also the entire region and, in many ways, the world.

And that’s because we believe that, together, Greece and the United States can become an even more powerful force for peace, for prosperity, and for human dignity. Because fundamentally that is what we both stand for.

This dialogue is an example of how close the friendship is between our countries, and how much we value each other.

When the founders of the United States, after hundreds of years of monarchies, sought to create a new form of government, they looked of course to ancient Greece, where democracy was invented.

It’s hard to imagine something as intrinsic to humanity as democracy being invented but it was, and it happened in Greece.

And I think this is particularly resonant today when in many ways the as President Biden has said, one of the central challenges of our time is to remind and demonstrate that democracies can effectively deliver for their citizens. And I think the United States and Greece together need to be working to demonstrate that proposition.