For a few hours on Saturday, the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, will be in Greece, specifically in Chania, where he is expected to meet with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who will also be in his ancestral homeland for the celebration of Epiphany.
According to Proto Thema, coming from Ankara, where he will meet with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Blinken will stop in Souda on Saturday afternoon and from there, he will head to the Mitsotakis family home in Akrotiri Chania, where he will have a private meeting with the Prime Minister.
Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis is also expected to arrive in the Cretan city on Saturday, given that Blinken will not stop in Athens.
Blinken is not the first American official to visit the Mitsotakis family home in Crete. The last visitor was Blinken's predecessor at the State Department, Mike Pompeo, who had also visited the Souda base and had eaten with his wife at the prime minister's residence.
George Bush Sr.'s visit to the Mitsotakis house in June 1991, when he was acting president of the USA, together with his wife Barbara, is also historic. He returned to this house in 1994 after leaving the White House for a private visit, given the close personal relations he had developed with Konstantinos Mitotakis.
Blinken arrives in Crete at a time of full flare in the Middle East and as the crisis threatens to spread following the assassination of a top Hamas leader in Beirut in a precision surgical strike. In fact, a wider tour will begin tonight in several capitals, aiming to achieve a settlement and avoid further escalating the situation.
At the same time, however, the fact that he will come to Greece from Turkey is of particular interest given the normalisation of Greek-Turkish ties, but also the American-Turkish negotiation to speed up Sweden's accession to NATO in exchange for the F-16 aircraft Turkey seeks to acquire and upgrade its air force.
On the F-16 issue, of course, there are still difficulties in Congress despite the removal of Senator Bob Menendez. On the other hand, Greece is interested in the fifth generation F-35 fighters, given that their supply has yet to be confirmed by the US, although our country is part of the relevant program.
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