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		</div><p>Greek riot police have used tear gas and stun grenades in Athens to disperse about 3,000 left-wing marchers protesting against a visit by US president Barack Obama.</p>
<p>The violence broke out as youths in motorcycle helmets and gas masks, armed with wooden clubs and petrol bombs, tried to break a police cordon in front of a barrier formed by police buses.</p>
<p>Rioters retired to the Athens Polytechnic university complex in the city centre, site of a 1973 student uprising, and engaged in running street fights with police. No injuries were reported.</p>
<p>Left-wing and anarchist groups who organised the protest had originally planned to reach the US embassy in another part of town.</p>
<p>But authorities banned demonstrations in a large area of the city centre, to ensure that protesters came nowhere near Mr Obama, who was attending a formal dinner at the residence of Greek president Procopis Pavlopoulos.</p>
<p>About 5,000 Communist party supporters took part in a separate, peaceful protest in central Athens, which did not challenge the police cordon, and about 1,000 people took part in a similar protest in Greece&#8217;s second city, Thessaloniki.</p>
<p>Greek authorities have deployed more than 5,000 police for Mr Obama&#8217;s visit.</p>
<p>The riot squad was on high alert for violence after an armed anarchist group called for <i>&#8220;attacks and clashes&#8221;</i> to disrupt the visit and leftist militants injured a police guard outside the French embassy with a hand grenade.</p>
<p>There is a strong anti-American tradition among Greek left-wingers, who still resent US support for Greece&#8217;s 1967-74 military dictatorship.</p>
<p>Mr Obama&#8217;s visit comes just two days before the country&#8217;s main annual anti-American demonstrations, which commemorate the bloody suppression, by military authorities, of the Polytechnic pro-democracy uprising.</p>
<p><a href="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GreeceProtesterssAgainstBarackObamaPic3_large.jpg"><img src="http://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GreeceProtesterssAgainstBarackObamaPic3_large.jpg" alt="greeceprotesterssagainstbarackobamapic3_large" width="600" height="381" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-99633" /></a></p>
<p>The small Popular Unity party, which took part in the main protest, described Mr Obama&#8217;s visit as <i>&#8220;a provocation, much more as it comes during the commemoration of the heroic Polytechnic revolt, where the US-driven dictatorship squashed the students with tanks&#8221;.</i></p>
<p>Party leader Panayiotis Lafazanis also blamed the US for Greece&#8217;s economic woes.<br />
The debt-crippled country depends on international bailout loans, and has been forced by its creditors to implement deep income cuts, tax hikes, welfare cuts and economic reforms.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;American imperialism has not changed,&#8221;</i> Mr Lafazanis said on Tuesday.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;The US presidents and administrations have played &#8211; and still play &#8211; a leading part in the bailout-linked plundering of our country&#8230; and their interventions are drowning our part of the world in blood and creating refugee waves.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>The last visit to Greece by a US president was by Bill Clinton in 1999 &#8211; also very close to the Polytechnic commemorations. It was marred by extensive street fighting between anarchists and riot police.</p>
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