July 10, 2009 01:31 am
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L’AQUILA, Italy (AP) — President Barack Obama seemed pleased with the gift he received Thursday from Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, but it was bittersweet nonetheless.
Silva gave Obama, a big sports fan, an autographed yellow Brazilian soccer jersey at the start of their morning meeting at the G-8 summit in Italy.
During their banter, which reporters partly heard through a translator, Silva spoke animatedly of the June 28 soccer match between the U.S. and Brazilian national teams in the Confederations Cup series. The game was a crushing loss for the underdog Americans, who led at the midway point, 2-0, only to lose 3-2.
Silva repeatedly said, “Yes we can,” which was Obama’s campaign catchphrase and apparently what the Brazilian president had in mind while his team trailed. Obama smiled gamely; if he felt Silva was rubbing it in a bit, he didn’t let on.
“Hey, look at this,” Obama said of the jersey, signed by the Brazilian team’s players. “Beautiful. All right, wonderful. I like that.”
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs later said Obama ended his 30-minute session with Silva by patting the Brazilian’s back and vowing, “we will not lose a two-point lead again.”
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Michelle Obama shook her head as she took in the extent of the damage, gazing upon centuries-old churches and other treasures rubbled by an earthquake that claimed more than 300 lives.
Obama and other first spouses on Thursday toured the ghostlike historic center of L’Aquila, the Italian city devastated by the April tremor and hosting world leaders this week for the G-8 summit.
Dressed in a short-sleeved yellow and white cardigan with a matching skirt, the U.S. first lady walked along piles of debris though L’Aquila’s main square and in front of a destroyed government palace.
She listened intently to explanations by Italian rescue officials and shook hands with firefighters who work daily to clear the wreckage and reinforce damaged buildings paving the way for reconstruction.
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A former model-turned-government minister is guiding Mrs. Obama and other G-8 spouses through their Italian sightseeing.
Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna showed the spouses through the dusty L’Aquila streets on Thursday and pointed out historic structures that survived the earthquake. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, under fire from a sex scandal, asked Carfagna to guide them around the summit. That role typically is assigned the host leader’s spouse, but Berlusconi’s wife is not attending the summit.
On Wednesday, Carfagna — wearing a black dress with a plunging neckline and pearls — escorted the spouses through museums and to the Vatican. Mrs. Obama skipped the Vatican audience with Pope Benedict XVI; she’ll join her husband and daughters for a private audience with the pontiff on Friday.
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First Chavez. Now Gadhafi. Obama has caused another stir with another handshake.
Before the G-8 dinner Thursday night, leaders gathered for what’s known in diplo-speak as a “family photo.” Several of the leaders mingled and chatted while they took their places, creating occasion for the notable moment of the evening: a handshake between Obama and Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.
Once an international pariah, the man former President Reagan once called the “mad dog of the Middle East” has rehabilitated himself in recent years — shedding a terrorist image for himself and the North African nation he has led for nearly 40 years.
His history reads like a resume of terror and revolutionary causes, including playing host to Abu Nidal after Syria expelled the Palestinian militant leader best known for the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Libya also earned a U.S. airstrike in 1986 for the bombing of a disco in Berlin that killed two American servicemen. Two years later, a bomb believed planted by Libyans destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.
In April, Obama shook hands with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at a Latin America summit, earning criticism from Republicans for being cozy with a leader hostile to the U.S. In that encounter, Obama was all smiles.
This time, at the dinner hosted by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the president assumed a polite expression, but not exactly a smile.
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Associated Press writer Marta Falconi contributed to this report.
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