Downing Street Says » Inauguration of President Obama

Asked if the Prime Minister had sent a message to President Obama and if there were any plans for the two to meet in the near future, the PMS said that the Prime Minister would write to President Obama today to congratulate him on his appointment, and to emphasise that we stood ready to work closely with his administration on many of the key international challenges we faced.

We would keep people updated in terms of meetings, as and when we had anything further to say. The key thing was not about the timings of meetings but more about the fact that we shared many of the same values and we took a similar approach to the incoming administration on a wide range of issues.

Asked if the Prime Minister would be upset if President Obama met, for example, President Sarkozy before him, the PMS reminded people that George Bush s first meeting with a European leader was with President Chirac of France, so we wouldn t attach too much importance to exactly who had what meetings and when. The important thing was whether or not governments shared the same values, adopted similar approaches and were able to work closely together on global challenges.

Asked if it had been decided whether or not we would take any Guantanamo prisoners should it be shut down this week, the PMS said that our position on Guantanamo had been set out by the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister in recent weeks and remained the same.

Asked if the Prime Minister would watch the inauguration, the PMS said that the Prime Minister was very focused on doing his job as British Prime Minister, but that he would try and find an opportunity to listen to some or all of it, if not live then later on in the day.

Asked if the British and US governments had shared values in regards to the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan, the PMS said that we wanted to work closely with the incoming administration on those issues. In regard to the Middle East we shared support for the importance of the two state solution and wanted to work with the US administration and others for a sustainable ceasefire.

Put that the Prime Minister had said yesterday that he was worried about the danger of countries retreating into banking protection schemes and asked if he was worried about the US in relation to this, the PMS said that the Prime Minister had not been talking about the US administration particularly. The point the Prime Minister had been making was that these things did not necessarily happen by choice; this was a consequence of what was happening in global financial markets, resulting in financial institutions retreating to their domestic markets. As a result, total capacity in global lending and capital markets were reduced and that had significant, unintended, consequences for the global economy. This was not necessarily about active decisions by governments to adopt protectionist policies. It was important that we worked together to find an international solution to what was a global problem.

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» Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Inauguration of President Obama

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