Obama Abroad

[Woodmonkey]

The Obama campaign held a conference today call to discuss the senator’s upcoming trip to the Middle East and Europe. According to the foreign press, Obama will arrive in Jordan early next week, but until now the campaign has refused to discuss any details of the trip on the record.

Several of Obama’s top foreign policy advisors were on today’s call to talk about the purpose of the trip and with whom the Illinois senator would meet on his trip to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France, and the UK. Included on that list: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Opposition Leader David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, King Abdullah of Jordan, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Chimon Perez, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

But the campaign continues to refuse to discuss the dates and locations of any of the planned stops, presumably for safety concerns, and will not say where the meeting with the Palestinian Authority leaders will take place.

According to advisor Susan Rice, Obama will exchange views with these leaders on issues critical to national and global security in order to deepen relationships and explore concretely a way to discuss cooperation on these challenges.

Rice added that “it’s important to note that it is not our intent to make policy or to negotiate, we won’t do so. There’s one President of the United States at any given time and we will certainly honor and respect that.” But, she said, the candidate may “underscore” the message to leaders that “stepped up U.S. contribution should be met with a stepped up NATO contribution to the extent possible” in Afghanistan.

The campaign is not calling this a campaign event - even though the candidate will be joined by at least 19 media outlets along the way. “The trip is not at all a campaign trip, a rally of any sort. It’s …a series of substantive meetings with our friends and our allies to talk about the common challenges that we face and the national security dangers for the 21st century,” Robert Gibbs said on the call.

In fact the only speech-like event the campaign will discuss is the much talked about Berlin event, where the candidate will “underscore our shared values and our shared goals” to the German people.

The German press originally reported the Democrat would speak at Brandenburg Gate, which then was quickly made off limits by the German government. Today the Obama campaign would not confirm or deny the latest speculations on where the speech may take place, only that they were looking for a location that “meets our needs and our German hosts’ needs and interests.”

The campaign declined to say how long this trip has been in the making, but said Senator Obama reached out to Secretary Rice about his trip and that the two had “a very productive conversation.” The campaign has been relying on help from US embassies in each of the countries they are planning to visit.

The Source