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Obama takes campaign trail overseas

Saturday, 19 July 2008

Democratic candidate Barack Obama heads overseas next week for a whistle-stop series of meetings with Middle Eastern and European leaders but with an eye firmly on the U.S. presidential race back home. Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has $72 million available to spend, campaign officials say. Obama's trip, which includes visits to Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and the UK, is intended to bolster his foreign policy credentials amid concerns that the Illinois senator has yet to convince voters of his suitability to be the country's next Commander in Chief. "This is the campaign trail via satellite -- pictures for the rhetoric back home," CNN's Candy Crowley said, adding that the trip was intended to demonstrate that Obama was up to the job of taking a lead role on the international stage. "The question is, is he tough enough to stand up for America but graceful enough to improve her image?" said Crowley. In a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, just 48 percent of registered voters said Obama would make a good Commander in Chief, compared to 72 percent for his Republican rival John McCain. "The message to voters back home is that he is focused on being a strong and effective Commander in Chief who is going to rehabilitate our image across the world," said Democratic Senator Evan Bayh. But a spokeswoman for McCain on Thursday said Obama's trip was politically motivated. "It's about politics. It's a way for Obama to try and compete on foreign policy," Jill Hazelbaker told The Associated Press. Obama is also scheduled to visit Afghanistan and Iraq this month with two Senate colleagues, Democrat Jack Reed and Republican Chuck Hagel. McCain has already visited both countries and accuses his rival of naivety for suggesting that Iraq had distracted the U.S. from the growing conflict in Afghanistan. "To say that Iraq is somehow disconnected from Afghanistan shows again incredible naivety," McCain told reporters this week. A video released by the McCain campaign also accused Obama of "flip-flopping" over his plans to withdraw troops from Iraq. Details of Obama's schedule next week remain sketchy but a diplomatic source told Time magazine that King Abdullah II of Jordan would urge Obama, if elected, to make Arab-Israeli peace talks a higher priority than has been the case under the administration of President George W. Bush. The New York Times claimed Obama would also meet Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Obama can expect a friendly reception in Europe where CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley said his campaign has captured the public imagination -- though he will be keen to avoid the sort of suggestions that he is "too European" which dogged the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. "I was talking to a former British foreign secretary this week and he said, 'It's like JFK.' He said it may not be justified, it may not be sensible, but that is the feeling," Oakley said. But the trip would also offer a more critical opportunity to gauge Obama's suitability for statesmanship, Oakley said: "People have been saying to me, 'Look this guy has only been in national politics for three years, let alone international politics.' We don't really know exactly what he is going to do." (CNN) Over two billion people lack access to improved sanitation:  UN Despite recent progress, more than 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, while nearly 1.2 billion people defecate without sanitary facilities, posing a major health threat to their communities, according to a report released on Thursday by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN World Health Organization (WHO). “At current trends, the world will fall short of the Millennium [Development Goals] sanitation target by more than 700 million people,” said Ann Veneman, UNICEF Executive Director. “Without dramatic improvements, much will be lost.” The report shows some progress in access to improved drinking water sources, with the number falling below one billion for the first time since data were first compiled in 1990. At present, 87 per cent of the world’s population can access improved water sources with the figure expected to rise to 90 per cent by 2015. The disparity between rural and urban communities is highlighted by the report. Rural dwellers without access to improved water sources outnumber their urban counterparts by four to one. In a related finding, the number of people defecating without sanitary facilities – a practice known as open defecation – has fallen from 24 per cent of the global population to 18 per cent in 2006. This remaining percentage includes some 778 million people in southern Asia. Both UN agencies point out that poor sanitation threatens children’s survival as a faecally-contaminated environment is directly linked to diarrhoeal disease, one of the biggest killers of children under the age of five. “We have today a full menu of low-cost technical options for the provision of sanitation in most settings,” Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO’s Director-General, said today. “More and more governments are determined to improve health by bringing water and sanitation to their poorest populations. If we want to break the stranglehold of poverty, and reap the benefits for health, we must address water and sanitation.” According to the report, seven of the ten countries that have made the most rapid progress and are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) drinking water target are in sub-Saharan Africa: Burkina Faso, Namibia, Ghana, Malawi, Uganda, Mali and Djibouti. (UN) Former bin Laden driver 1st test of Gitmo trials Salim Hamdan is a small player with a big role. A former driver for Osama bin Laden, he is about to become the first Guantanamo prisoner to be tried for war crimes in a major test of the U.S. system for prosecuting alleged terrorists. Hamdan is an unlikely candidate for the history books — a wiry Yemeni father of two with a fourth-grade education who is not accused of a direct role in any terrorist attacks. He is scheduled to go on trial Monday on charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism before a jury of military officers in a specially built courtroom at a former air strip at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison. A judge in Washington refused Thursday to order a halt to the proceedings. That means Hamdan, who earned about $200 a month as bin Laden's driver, will be the first defendant in a U.S. military war crimes trial since World War II. His case will be watched around the world, the subject of inevitable debate and future legal challenges. His Pentagon-appointed lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Brian Mizer, will argue that the U.S. has zeroed in on too small a target in Hamdan. "He is a driver and a mechanic, not a member of al-Qaida," Mizer said Thursday. So far the U.S. has charged 20 Guantanamo prisoners, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. One Guantanamo detainee, David Hicks, accepted a plea bargain in 2007, served nine months and is now free in his native Australia. Military prosecutors agree Hamdan is a relatively minor figure, but they say that as a driver he helped carry weapons that were used on the battlefields of Afghanistan and helped bin Laden evade retribution after the Sept. 11 attacks. "It's a serious case," said the chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence Morris. Hamdan, now in his late 30s, left Yemen in 1996 to become an Islamic fighter in the former Soviet state of Tajikistan, according to testimony by U.S. authorities at pretrial hearings. He could not get into that country so he went to Afghanistan, where he managed to get a job with bin Laden. Bin Laden, who traces his ancestry to Yemen, preferred to surround himself with people from that country. Prosecutors said Hamdan was first hired to work on the terrorist leader's farms, then won a promotion to driver, doubling as a bodyguard. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Hamdan drove bin Laden in a convoy of vehicles racing among safehouses as the U.S. tried to pinpoint the al-Qaida leader's whereabouts. He broke away in early October to evacuate his daughter and pregnant wife from Kandahar during the U.S.-led invasion. After leaving them at the Pakistan border, he headed back to Kandahar. But he was stopped at a roadblock by Afghan troops and turned over to U.S. forces. At the time, he allegedly had two surface-to-air missiles in his car. He was taken to Guantanamo in May 2002 and selected as one of the first inmates to face war-crimes charges, setting off a legal odyssey that has severely tested the Bush administration's war-on-terror detention policies. A challenge by his attorneys led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down an earlier version of the Guantanamo tribunals in 2006, but the Republican-controlled Congress responded by authorizing a slightly revised system. Prosecutors say they plan to charge as many as 80 prisoners. Seven years into his detention, Hamdan has expressed frustration that all the maneuvering hasn't meant any improvements for him. He wears a tan sports coat over a white robe to court and often grins at the judge, but has threatened to boycott the trial. This week he asked his attorneys in court what use they are since he is still held in an individual, maximum-security cell. He complained that a section of the prison where he was held for several months was "like a graveyard. Like when you place a dead person in a tomb." But military prosecutors say he belongs in an individual cell because of disciplinary problems, including a history of inciting other detainees to hassle guards. In one episode, they say, he had to be warned twice to stop kicking his cell door. In 2005, he allegedly threw a cup of urine at a guard. On the witness stand this week, Hamdan said he has tried to control his temper by drawing a sign that says "Don't get angry." (AP)

 

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