Obama's disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit

[Obama_Sucks]

Obama's disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit

By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, April 14, 2010


World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.

They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck.

In the middle of it all was Obama -- occupant of an office once informally known as "leader of the free world" -- putting on a clinic for some of the world's greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.

The only part of the summit, other than a post-meeting news conference, that was visible to the public was Obama's eight-minute opening statement, which ended with the words: "I'm going to ask that we take a few moments to allow the press to exit before our first session."

Reporters for foreign outlets, admitted for the first time to the White House press pool, got the impression that the vaunted American freedoms are not all they're cracked up to be.

Yasmeen Alamiri from the Saudi Press Agency got this lesson in press freedom when trying to cover Obama's opening remarks as part of a limited press "pool": "The foreign reporters/cameramen were escorted out in under two minutes, just as the leaders were about to begin, and Obama was going to make remarks. . . . Sorry, it is what it is."

Alamiri's counterparts from around the world wrote of similar experiences in their pool reports. Arabic-language MBC TV's Nadia Bilbassy had this to say of Obama's meeting with the Jordanian king: "We were there for around 30 seconds, not enough even to notice the color of tie of both presidents. I think blue for the king."

The Press Trust of India, at Obama's meeting with the Pakistani prime minister, reported, "In less than a minute, the pool was asked to leave." The Yomiuri Shimbun correspondent found that she was "ushered out about 30 seconds" after arriving for Obama's meeting with the Malaysian prime minister. A reporter with Turkey's TRT-Turk went to Obama's meeting with the president of Armenia, but "we had to leave the room again after less than 40 seconds."

Even the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, was more talkative with the press than Obama. Michelle Jamrisko, with Japan's Kyodo News, noted in her pool report that Hu, at his session with Obama, spoke to the Chinese media in Chinese, while Obama limited himself mostly to "say hello to the cameras" and "thank you everybody."

Obama's official schedule for Tuesday would have pleased China's Central Committee. Excerpts: "The President will attend the Heads of Delegation working lunch. This lunch is closed press. . . . The President will meet with Prime Minster Erdogan of Turkey. This meeting is closed press. . . . The President will attend Plenary Session II of the Nuclear Security Summit. This session is closed press."

Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said it was the most restricted set of such meetings they had ever seen. They complained to both the administration and White House Correspondents' Association, which will discuss the matter Thursday with White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

The restrictions have become a common practice for the Obama White House. When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu came to the White House a couple of weeks ago, reporters were kept away. Soon after that, Obama signed an executive order on abortion, again without any coverage.
Over the weekend, Obama broke with years of protocol and slipped off to a soccer game without the "protective" pool that is always in the vicinity of the president in case the unthinkable occurs. Obama joked about it later to Pakistan's prime minister, saying reporters "were very upset."

In "bilateral" meetings with foreign leaders, presidents usually take questions, or at least trade statements. But at most of Obama's, there were only written "readouts." Canada: "The president and the prime minister noted the enduring strength of our bilateral partnership." India: "The two leaders vowed to continue to strengthen the robust relationship between the people of their countries." Pakistan: "President Obama began by noting that he is very fond of Pakistan."

Finally, away from other leaders, Obama took reporters' questions for 20 minutes. They were tough and skeptical questions that punctured the banal readouts: pointing out that the nonproliferation agreements weren't binding, noting China's equivocation on sanctions against Iran, and pressing Obama on the failure to curb North Korea's weapons. The Post's Scott Wilson asked Obama if he would call on Israel, which skipped the summit, to declare its nuclear weapons.

"I'm not going to comment on their program," Obama said.
Not surprising. But it's still important that the questions are asked.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/13/AR2010041303067_pf.html

 

[badbabysitter]

Meanwhile, on planet Earth....

WASHINGTON — In full accord on a global threat, world leaders Tuesday endorsed President Barack Obama's call for securing all nuclear materials around the globe within four years to keep them out of the grasp of terrorists. They offered few specifics for achieving that goal, but Obama declared "the American people will be safer and the world will be more secure" as a result.

Obama had called the 47-nation summit to focus world attention on the threat of nuclear terrorism, a peril he termed the greatest threat facing all nations and a "cruel irony of history" after mankind had survived the Cold War and decades of fear stoked by a U.S.-Soviet arms race.

A terrorist group in possession of plutonium no bigger than an apple could detonate a device capable of inflicting hundreds of thousands of casualties, he said.

"Terrorist networks such as al-Qaida have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon, and if they ever succeeded, they would surely use it," he told the opening session, which convened under tight security at the Washington Convention Center. "Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world, causing extraordinary loss of life and striking a major blow to global peace and stability."

The summit countries said they would cooperate more deeply with the United Nations and its watchdog arm, the International Atomic Energy Agency. They also said they would share information on nuclear detection and ways to prevent nuclear trafficking.

Several countries, including Ukraine, Mexico and Canada, declared their intention to give up highly enriched uranium as a step toward making it harder for terrorist groups or criminal gangs to steal or acquire a key ingredient in the making of atomic weapons. Russia and the U.S. signed a deal to dispose of tons of weapons-grade plutonium, although that won't start for eight years.

While the summit focused on the threat from terrorists, attention was given to Iran, North Korea and other nations who are seeking or have succeeded in obtaining or developing nuclear weapons. Neither Iran nor North Korea was invited to attend the session, which the Obama administration billed as the largest gathering of world leaders on U.S. soil since the U.N. founding conference in San Francisco in 1945.

The leaders agreed to hold a followup nuclear security summit in South Korea in 2012.

In a concluding news conference, Obama said he was confident China would join other nations in pressing for tough new sanctions on Iran for continuing to defy the international community in seeking such weapons.

Story continues below "Words have to mean something. There have to be some consequences," Obama said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao met with Obama on Monday, then on Tuesday gave a speech to the group calling for "effective" measures to safeguard nuclear weapons and materials. But he stopped short of mentioning Iran's program.

Iran denies it intends to build an atomic bomb, and despite widespread concern about its intentions, Obama is having difficulty getting agreement on a new set of U.N. sanctions against the country. He said Tuesday that Hu had assured him that China would participate in drafting sessions at the United Nations on strong sanctions.

Throughout his news conference, Obama set a realist's tone about the role of the United States in world affairs. That is, it is necessary for the U.S. to lead on matters such as nuclear security. But on getting countries in the Mideast to agree to peace, on getting the Chinese to move to a market-based currency, on getting Iran and North Korea to play by international rules on nuclear compliance, on getting countries to live up to their fresh pledges on nuclear security, Obama repeatedly said the U.S. can't be the enforcer of world order. Countries must act in line with their own interests, he said.

As applied to Iran, this means U.N. and other sanctions are designed to change Iran's calculations about what it would gain from giving up its nuclear ambitions, he said.

Asked about steps that have been taken against North Korea, Obama conceded that "sanctions are not a magic wand." Still, he said he hoped the pressure could lead North Korea's leaders to return to nuclear disarmament talks that they abandoned before Obama took office.

In a joint work plan spelling out specific actions to be taken, the summit countries said they would "work together to achieve universality" of the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, but there was no mention of specific additional countries formally ratifying the convention. They also underscored the importance of a 2005 amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material.

Daryl Kimball, head of the Arms Control Association, applauded the summit, which he said was an important step.

"This is the highest level of attention this issue has gotten ever," Kimball said.

But Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican critic of Obama's nuclear policies, said the conference was a disappointment.

"The summit's purported accomplishment is a nonbinding communique that largely restates current policy and makes no meaningful progress in dealing with nuclear terrorism threats or the ticking clock represented by Iran's nuclear weapons program," Kyl said.

As an example of the collective action called for by Obama, officials of the U.S., Canada and Mexico announced an agreement to work together, along with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency, to convert the fuel in Mexico's research reactor from highly enriched uranium to a lower-enriched fuel that would be much harder to use in the manufacturing of a nuclear weapon.

Mexico further agreed that once the fuel is converted, it will get rid of all its highly enriched uranium. That follows Ukraine's announcement on Monday that it, too, will ship all its highly enriched uranium to protected storage outside its borders – possibly to Russia or the U.S.

U.S. officials touted their completion of a long-delayed agreement with Russia on disposing of tons of plutonium from Cold War-era weapons. Each country will complete and operate facilities to dispose of at least 34 tons of plutonium by using it as fuel in civilian power reactors to produce electricity, although it will not start until 2018; monitors and inspectors will ensure against cheating.

The State Department said the combined 68 tons of U.S. and Russian plutonium represents enough for about 17,000 nuclear weapons. The deal was signed Tuesday at the summit by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

 

[Left_Nut]

This is what we get for having a president with absolutely no experience. We have a janitor running the country.

 

[badbabysitter]

I have nothing to add to this topic, and since I dont understand I'll just repeat some tired axioms.Grrr Obama Grrr.

fixed it for ya

 

[Tyrone Biggs]

How much money will Obama get from foreign countries and special organizations when he leaves office?

 

[badbabysitter]

if he's like Sarah Palin...100 thousand a gig