Page 28
Kaieteur News
Thursday December 12, 2013
Britain’s Cameron defends ‘selfie’ with Obama at Mandela service (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday defended his behaviour at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in South Africa after he was criticised at home for posing with U.S. President Barack Obama for what some said was a disrespectful photograph. The self-portrait - known as a “selfie” in online social media - was taken on Tuesday in Soweto at the memorial event for Mandela, who died last Thursday aged 95. It captured Cameron and Obama - who suffered a similar ticking off in the U.S. media - smiling broadly either side of Danish Prime Minister Helle ThorningSchmidt. All three appeared to be in high spirits and sharing a
joke as a stern-faced Michelle Obama looked away. The image graced the front pages of many of Britain’s newspapers on Wednesday, with the massmarket Sun tabloid newspaper calling it a “gaffe” that betrayed a lack of respect for the late South African politician. Cameron, who is trying to court the Sun’s readers ahead of a 2015 election, was asked about the incident during his weekly question and answer session in the British parliament. “You should always remember that the television cameras are always on,” Cameron told parliament. “In my defence I’d say that Nelson Mandela played an extraordinary role in his life and in his death in bringing
people together.” So when asked by the Danish prime minister to join the photograph he said he had thought it only polite to agree since she was married to the son of a former leader of the opposition Labour Party. Separately, Cameron’s spokesman stressed the event had been a “celebration” of Mandela’s life rather than his funeral, which is due to take place on Sunday. Across the Atlantic, the New York Daily News said Obama had committed “a funeral faux pas” by participating in the photograph, which the Washington Post said had detracted from the U.S. leader’s eulogy to Mandela.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers are raising questions about the secret U.S. diplomacy with Iran that led to last month’s nuclear breakthrough, demanding greater transparency and expressing disappointment at being left in the dark. The Associated Press has reported that much of the Nov. 24 deal among world powers and Iran resulted from a series of secret meetings between U.S. and Iranian officials. The talks took place in the Middle East sultanate of Oman and elsewhere over eight months. Yesterday, Sen. Bob Corker, who recently visited Oman and discussed the diplomatic back-channel with the country’s foreign minister, asked one of the American officials involved to explain the process. Puneet Talwar, Obama’s senior Mideast adviser who has been nominated for a senior State Department post, responded by saying he met with an Iranian team in Oman in the summer of 2012 and then again in March 2013. He said the talks only heated up after Iran’s moderate president, Hassan Rouhani, took office in August. “We then had an accelerating pace of discussions bilaterally with the Iranians,” Talwar said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. He said the discussions, however, were constantly linked to public, parallel negotiations involving Iran and the U.S., Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia. “It was made clear,”
Talwar said. “It focused exclusively on the nuclear issue, so there were no other side discussions underway. And it was merged, after the conversations gained traction,” with the process involving the global powers. The agreement last month required Iran to halt and roll back central elements of its nuclear program. That included eliminating its production and stockpiles of higher-enriched uranium, banning the addition of any new centrifuges and barring any work on a heavy water reactor that potentially could produce plutonium for nuclear bombs. Iran insists its program is designed solely for peaceful energy generation and medical research purposes. In exchange for its concessions, the U.S. and its partners agreed to ease economic penalties that the Obama administration estimates at about $7 billion. The administration also promised no new penalties for the six-month duration of the deal, a source of lingering contention with skeptical lawmakers in Congress. In weekend comments, President Barack Obama played down the significance of the secret talks. Appearing at the Brookings Institution, he said the contacts were few and focused on seeing how serious Iran was about engaging in serious negotiations. “They did not get highly substantive in the first several meetings but were much more exploring how much room, in
fact, did they have to get something done,” Obama said. As they became more technical, he added, the discussions merged with the public talks with world powers. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., made clear his disappointment at not being informed of the private diplomacy. Rubio asked Talwar if any member of Congress had been briefed; Talwar said he didn’t believe so. Rubio also asked whether other issues came up in the talks, such as human rights, Iran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and an alleged Iranian assassination plot against Saudi Arabia’s ambassador in Washington. Talwar said only that the fate of three detained Americans in Iran had been discussed. On Tuesday, Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., accused the State Department of deliberately misleading the public. He said such deception raises questions about the administration’s current information on Iran. “The administration claimed not to be in negotiations with Iran, when they in fact were,” Salmon said, specifically accusing a former State Department spokeswoman of misleading reporters in February by flatly denying the existence of bilateral discussions. “Your department,” Salmon told Secretary of State John Kerry, “intentionally misled the American people about these negotiations taking place behind closed doors.
Congress raises questions about secret Iran talks