Archive for February, 2009

The fifth Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, scheduled to be held on April 17-19, 2009, will be the first hemispheric forum for U.S. President Barack Obama to engage with leaders from across Latin America and the Caribbean. The Port of Spain Summit will also be the first meeting of all 34 democratic heads of government from Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada, and the United States since the contentious 2005 Summit in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Taking place less than four months after his inauguration, the Summit could set the tone for hemispheric relations during the early stages of his Administration. Read this new Congressional Research Service report…

Expectations remain high that the new American leadership can change the world in 2009. With a troubled domestic economy priority one, what other issues on the world stage can the United States realistically tackle in its first year? This session of the 2009 World Economic Forum annual meeting, held on Jan. 29 in Davos, Switzerland, examined the global challenges facing the U.S., its key principles and core objectives going forward. It featured the prime minister of Kenya, the foreign ministers of France, Iran and Iraq, and was moderated by Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN International.
Read the summary of this discussion:

U.S. President Barack Obama for the first time addressed several thousand people gathered for the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC. In part, he said: “We know … that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” The Torah commands, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” In Islam, there is a hadith that reads “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth. “ Read Obama’s full remarks

A dozen foreign leaders attended the National Prayer Breakfast, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Quartet Representative and founder of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, who delivered the keynote address. He noted: “Today, religion is under attack from without and from within. From within, it is corroded by extremists who use their faith as a means of excluding the other. ‘I am what I am in opposition to you. If you do not believe as I believe, you are a lesser human being.’ From without, religious faith is assailed by an increasingly aggressive secularism, which derides faith as contrary to reason and defines faith by conflict. Thus do the extreme believers and the aggressive non-believers come together in unholy alliance.”
Read Blair’s full remarks

In his first interview with Arab media, on January 27, U.S. President Barack Obama offered a bold change to America’s relations with the Muslim world.

“My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives,” President Obama told Al Arabiya, a 24-hour Arabic-language news channel based in Dubai. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.”

The interview is part of the President’s broader outreach to the Muslim world, which includes a promise to make a major address from the capital of a Muslim nation. Noting he has Muslim members of his family and has lived in Muslim countries, he added, “…[W]hat I want to communicate is the fact that in all my travels throughout the Muslim world, what I’ve come to understand is that regardless of your faith…people all have certain common hopes and common dreams.”

Read the full interview transcript.