Head of 2021 committee: Celebrations will be more significant than 2004 Olympics

In comments to Skai television channel, the head of the committee tasked with overseeing preparations to mark the bicentenary of Greece's 19-century revolt against Ottoman Turkey, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, said the celebrations would be more significant than those for the 2004 Olympics, for which she headed the organizing committee.

In an interview on Thursday night, Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, said the 2021 celebrations are aimed at "helping us see what happened" and "remember or learn for the first time abnout the facts of true bravery and self-sacrifice." 

She added that she did no envisage "pharaonic projects."

Questioned about the 2004 Athens Olympics, she said claims that they prompted the country's bankruptcy are "a mistake, a lie." "The Games succeeded, the committee's budget was 2 billion then and we left 135 million to prime minister Kostas Karamanlis," she said. "For further details, ask the governments who were responsible," she said. 

Historians Mark Mazower and Stathis Kalyvas are among several eminent academics who will join the 2021 committee.