Obama Warns North Korea in Speech

SEOUL, South Korea — In a Veterans Day speech at a United States Army base in central Seoul, President Obama said Thursday that America remains committed to defending South Korea, and warned North Korea that it faces continued isolation unless it fulfills its commitments to give up nuclear weapons.

While Mr. Obama is in South Korea for a Group of 20 meeting on fixing the stricken global economy, relations with North Korea are also expected to be on the agenda, particularly in talks with the host nation. The United States and its allies are seeking ways to get North Korea to return to six-party talks aimed at convincing the North to drop its weapons program.

Mr. Obama will meet later Thursday with the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, whose country’s relations with the North have become even more tense since the sinking in March of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, apparently by a North Korean torpedo.

There are signs that there could be movement afoot as to the approach of the United States and its allies toward the reclusive regime of the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-il. Earlier this week, Mr. Lee dropped demands that the North apologize for the Cheonan’s sinking as a precondition of talks.

In a strongly worded statement made before thousands of soldiers and Marines gathered on a chilly morning, Mr. Obama called North Korea a starving nation whose economic failures were visible even from space, where at night “the brilliant lights of Seoul” can be seen giving way “to the utter darkness of the North.”

“But there is another path available to North Korea,” Mr. Obama said. “If they choose to fulfill their international obligations and commitments to the international community, they will have the chance to offer their people lives of growing opportunity instead of crushing poverty.”

During the speech, Mr. Obama also honored the 37,000 Americans and far larger number of South Koreans who died fighting the North during the 1950-53 Korean War. He also led the audience in a standing ovation for 62 veterans of that war who attended the speech at the Yongsan base, in the center of this city of gleaming skyscrapers and modern highways.

“Gentlemen, we are honored by your presence,” Mr. Obama said. “We are grateful for your service. And the world is better off because of what you did here.”


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Obama praises Indonesia's 'spirit of tolerance' as a model

JAKARTA, INDONESIA - Speaking before thousands in the city that helped raise him, President Obama on Wednesday cited this country's transition from dictatorship to democracy as a model in an Islamic world often governed by unelected autocracies.

He also praised Indonesia - the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation - for a "spirit of tolerance that is written into your constitution, symbolized in your mosques and churches and temples, and embodied in your people," a quality worthy for all the world to emulate.

Obama received a warm welcome from the crowd of about 6,500 at the University of Indonesia, particularly when he spoke in Indonesian, as when he recalled buying satay and bakso from street vendors or referenced the national motto, "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika," or "Unity in Diversity."

"We are two nations which have traveled different paths. Yet our nations show that hundreds of millions who hold different beliefs can be united in freedom under one flag," Obama said.

The speech was cast by White House officials as part of the president's continuing outreach to Muslims, an effort he began last year in Cairo by calling for a "new beginning" between the United States and Islam.

But Muslim views of Obama around the world have worsened in several countries since then, and in the United States, a recent Pew Research Center poll found that nearly one in five Americans thinks the president is a Muslim, in part because of the time he spent here as a child. Obama describes himself as a practicing Christian.

The president's efforts to mend relations with the Islamic world were partly overshadowed by the reopening Tuesday of a rupture between the United States and Israel, a development that reflected his administration's struggle to strike a balance that satisfies either side in the Middle East conflict.

Obama criticized Israel for undermining two-month-old peace talks with new plans to build on land that Palestinians claim as their future capital. At a news conference Tuesday evening, he said of the Israeli government's project to construct 1,300 apartments in East Jerusalem,"This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations."

Israelis and Palestinians both claim rights to Jerusalem, and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to Obama by asserting in a statement that "Jerusalem isn't a settlement - Jerusalem is the capital of Israel."

Israel's construction in the occupied eastern part of the city, seized by the Israeli army in the 1967 Middle East war, has infuriated Palestinians, who view the work as a slow erosion of their future state.

Obama and his advisers have, at times, sought to play down his upbringing in Indonesia, but he embraced it on Wednesday during his brief visit.

"Let me begin with a simple statement," he told the audience, which included students, civil activists and others. "Indonesia is a part of me."

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Obama's maiden visit to India a triumph: Experts

Washington, :

Terming US President Barack Obama's maiden trip to India as a triumph, noted American experts cutting across ideological spectrum today said that it has taken the Indo-US relationship to an altogether new level.

"I think the (Obama) visit was a triumph," said Ashley Tellis, of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who had served as one of the foreign policy aid of the presidential campaign of Senator John McCain in 2008. "His speech to Parliament was a masterly blend of idealism and realism and he convincingly proved the point that he personally cares about India and that the US-India relationship is vitally important for the United States—that was the most significant achievement," Tellis said. "It turns out the skeptics were wrong. Historians will see the trip as an important milestone in the maturation and consolidation of what President Obama called 'the defining partnership of the 21st century'," said Robert M Hathaway, Director, Asia Program Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. More substantial, he said was the obvious personal chemistry between the two leaders, a rapport that should, in the years ahead, facilitate other more concrete achievements tying the two countries together. "The dissolution of suspicion, the nurturing of trust, and the promotion of bonds of genuine friendship and understanding -- historians may someday see this as the most significant aspect of the Obama visit," Hathaway observed. Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation, another Washington-based think-tank, said Obama's trip was successful in consolidating Indo-US ties and even taking the engagement to a new level. "The visit sent a clear signal of the importance his administration attaches to India, highlighting both economic and security cooperation," she said. "Robust endorsement of India's global role can also be seen in other more concrete initiatives like the easing of export controls on Indian organizations and support for Indian membership in nonproliferation groupings like the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime." "These announcements demonstrate that Obama Administration will continue the legacy established by the Bush administration of incorporating India into the global non-proliferation regime, and viewing India as a partner, not a target, in stemming proliferation," Curtis said. The US President's statement that India would now be "treated the same as our closest allies and partners" should lay to rest Indian concerns that the Indo-US relationship may languish under the Obama regime, Curtis said. It was important for Obama to establish that the US would continue to prioritize relations with India, and not allow the Afghanistan-Pakistan agenda to bog down US-India ties, she said, adding that Obama seems to have achieved this objective, having handled very carefully expected questions on the US relationship with Pakistan. "Obama made a good case for how expanding US-India investment and trade ties will benefit the US economy. He provided more finessed remarks on the outsourcing issue than he has in the past, explaining that it is not a one- dimensional issue and that each side should focus more on the mutual benefits gained from their economic linkages." "This should help build support back in the US for strong US-India economic ties, and dispel the image of India as economic competitor to the US," Curtis added.