THOUSANDS of communists marched through Athens yesterday in protest at Greek government proposals to open new Nato bases in the country.

The Communist Party and Communist Youth staged rallies from “Thrace to Crete,” while a massive demonstration wound its way from the Defence Ministry to the US embassy.

Crowds chanted: “Nato and its bases out of Greece!”

Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos suggested to his US counterpart Jim Mattis on October 10 that three new Nato bases could be opened in Greece, on top of existing naval and air facilities operated by the imperialist alliance at Aktion National Airport, Crete Naval Base and elsewhere.

Mr Kammenos heads Syriza’s junior coalition partner Anel, but Communist Party of Greece general secretary Dimitris Koutspoumpas said Syriza’s attempts to “blur the waters” by distancing itself from the policy would fail.

The defence minister and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras were trying to play “good cop, bad cop,” with the latter claiming to follow a “multidimensional foreign policy.”

Military bases at Souda and Aktion had expanded on Syriza’s watch, he said, with the latter’s role in hosting spy planes extended to become a platform for murder by drone.

And he warned that the government planned to allow the US to station nuclear weapons at Araxos again — no nuclear warheads have been based in Greece since 2001.

US President Donald Trump announced at the weekend that he plans to withdraw from the landmark 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Moscow, which banned ground-launch missiles with a range of 500-5,500km and resulted in the removal of most nuclear missiles from Europe.