morning

The White House coverage is audio only, but C-Span (here) will be showing it live (Thanks TeamObama)

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Video of the President’s interview with the BBC here

Transcript of the interview here

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You can see video of the First Lady’s West Point address here

Thank you Lisa

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A painting of U.S. President Barack Obama stands next to a replica pint of Guinness in a shop in Moneygall

There’s better news for Moneygall today! (There was talk yesterday that the weather would prevent the President from visiting there):

RTE: On arrival, Mr Obama and his wife, Michelle, will travel to Áras an Uachtaráin to meet President Mary McAleese and afterwards he will meet Taoiseach Enda Kenny at Farmleigh.

Mr Obama is then expected to fly by helicopter to his ancestral home in Moneygall in Co Offaly.

If the weather does not allow for helicopter travel, there are alternative plans to transport Mr Obama to Moneygall, the Department of Foreign Affairs has said. Met Éireann has forecast that tomorrow will be extremely windy or stormy, especially in Connacht and Ulster.

Tomorrow evening, he will return to Dublin to make a public address after a free open air concert on College Green.

** Thank you TeamObama **

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Catch you all later – have a blissful Sunday 😉

barack meets the beeb

BBC: The chance to interview the president of the United States does not come around often, and the BBC’s Andrew Marr fights the nerves as he hacks back his long list of questions again, and again, for his 18 minutes with Barack Obama.

…Was I nervous? I have interviewed prime ministers, foreign leaders, royalty and rock stars. Damn right I was nervous. You don’t get an interview like this very often.

…At last he arrived. We’d been warned he was tired, but he arrived with a broad beaming smile. As we sat down, I told him I’d be starting with Osama Bin Laden before we got to the big issue of the week, the Middle East. “Andrew, you can start with whatever you want,” President Obama replied: “You’ve got 18 minutes.”

…What was he like to interview? Very focused, very clever. Once or twice he saw where I might be heading, and expertly headed me off at the pass. Once I got a steely look and a “that’s enough of that” kind of answer. He grinned at a couple of the questions, and was as nuanced, careful and balanced as his reputation suggested.

But he wasn’t bland. Two or three times he gave me much crunchier, newsier answers than I was expecting……

More here

give & take

BBC: US President Barack Obama has insisted that the “1967 border” must be the “basis for negotiations” to set up a future Palestinian state. In an interview with the BBC, Mr Obama said the position was “obvious” to those who had followed the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

…”The basis for negotiations will involve looking at that 1967 border, recognising that conditions on the ground have changed and there are going to need to be swaps to accommodate the interests of both sides,” Mr Obama said in an interview to be broadcast in full on Sunday.

The US president said Israel would not “move forward” in negotiations unless the country felt secure against attacks from Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. And he acknowledged that the future status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees would remain to be discussed.

“Our argument is let’s get started on a conversation about territory and about security,” he said. “If we make progress on what two states would look like and a reality sets in among the parties, that this is how it is going to end up, then it becomes easier for both sides to make difficult concessions to resolve those two other issues.”

Israel immediately rejected Mr Obama’s vision of a Palestinian state based on the borders before the 1967 Six Day war between Israel and a bloc of neighbouring Arab states. In a statement, Mr Netanyahu, who is due to hold talks with Mr Obama in Washington on Friday, said the 1967 lines would leave Jewish settlements outside Israel.

More here

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I see the President is being attacked by both extremes after his speech today (which is a good sign)…. reminds me of these two photos:

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Washington Post: President Obama used an address Thursday on the tumult in the Middle East and North Africa to increase pressure on American allies in the region, including Israel, to carry out lasting political reform and make peace with old enemies.

…Obama used one of the longest sections of his speech to urge Israel, in unusually frank terms, to negotiate a final peace agreement with the Palestinians.

For the first time, Obama cited Israel’s boundaries on the eve of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war as the basis for negotiation over final borders, saying that a “full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces” from the West Bank should be carried out in coordination with Palestinian security forces.

The formulation goes beyond principles outlined by President George W. Bush, who stated during his term that “it is unrealistic to expect” Israel to pull back to the 1967 lines. Obama said the negotiations over final borders, which he indicated may include land swaps to accommodate Israel’s large settlement blocs, should result in “a viable Palestine, a secure Israel.”

Obama acknowledged that the conflict’s most emotional questions — the division of Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital, and the right of Palestinian refugees or their descendants to return to homes inside Israel — would still need to be resolved. But he said moving forward now on the border and security aspects would provide a foundation for resolving the two “wrenching and emotional issues” in a “just and fair” manner.

By doing so, Obama essentially embraced the middle ground between two camps within his national security team, which for months have debated how far he should go in spelling out his plan for an Israeli-Palestinian peace…..

Full article here