Heading to Oslo in Weeks, President Obama Faces Tough Days on the Diplomatic Front

BEIJING, CHINA -- In less than a month, President Obama will step onto a stage in Oslo, Norway, to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
If Mr. Obama hoped that his week-long four-country visit to Asia, his first as president, would yield concrete accomplishments that might silence critics skeptical that he deserves that prize, he might be disappointed.
Though White House aides insist the president's trip was mainly to reassert a US presence in Asian diplomacy, and that his itinerary set no expectations for major feats, the president has heard disappointing news in the past few days.
On Tuesday, even as one member of the White House National Security Council seemed to signal his belief that President Obama would soon be pushing for economic sanctions against Iran for refusing to cooperate with international diplomatic efforts to end its suspected nuclear weapons program, Chinese President and Paramount Leader Hu Jintao Tuesday signaled he might not be willing to go along if the matter comes up for a vote on the United Nations Security Council.
"We both stressed that to uphold the international nuclear nonproliferation regime and to appropriately resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiations is very important to stability in the Middle East and in the Gulf region," President Hu said after meeting with President Obama. "During the talks, I underlined to President Obama that given our differences in national conditions, it is only normal that our two sides may disagree on some issues.  What is important is to respect and accommodate each other's core interests and major concerns."
Earlier on his trip, in Singapore, the Prime Minister of Denmark, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, the U.N.-sponsored climate conference's chairman, formally announced that he did not think there would be an agreement coming out of Copenhagen, and more negotiations will be necessary.
Then, after meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a side meeting in Singapore, President Obama acknowledged that US-Russian negotiators would almost certainly not make the deadline for a new nuclear disarmament agreement to take the place of the START treaty that expires on December 5.
More frustrations followed.
On Monday, Chinese government officials refused to broadcast live President Obama's Shanghai town hall meeting on state-run television.
Moreover, Chinese authorities attacked the US economy. China Banking Regulatory Commission chairman Liu Mingkang blamed falsely inflated assets throughout the world on "massive speculation" caused by a weak U.S. dollar and low U.S. interest rates, which he said prompted "unavoidable risks for the recovery of the global economy, especially emerging economies." Yao Jian, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Commerce, complained of "a protectionist side" of the US economy, a concern President Hu echoed.
Asked about these incidents, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that President Obama "did not think the waters would part and everything would change as a result of his 2 1/2 day trip to China."
But more widely, said a senior administration official, "We came on this trip to try to incrementally move the ball forward on a number of key and important issues."
On climate change, said the official, "we have reached consensus with the leaders of APEC" -- the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit -- "and now with this visit to China, to keep working to make Copenhagen a success by reaching a political agreement that allows the process to continue to move forward. On START, similarly, we had our meeting with Medvedev to try to create further momentum to try to get this done by as close as possible to the December 5 expiration date."
"And on Iran," continued the official, "we wanted to continue our close consultation with the Russians and the Chinese on our agreed-upon dual-track approach," pursuing negotiations with Iran while also preparing for sanctions.
Jeffrey Bader, Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council acknowledged that "the Chinese clearly are hoping that there will be some sort of resolution" on the Iranian nuclear dilemma. "the president did talk to President Hu about the possibility... that we will not reach a resolution of this issue and we may have to go to track two and greater pressure. I would not say we got an answer today from the Chinese, nor did we expect one on the subject."
He seemed to almost say that he thought sanctions would be a "probability," but he stopped himself and stuck with "possibility."
"We expect the Chinese to be with us," Bader said.
Other issues also make the US-China relationship "complex," as US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman acknowledged. For example: US owes China roughly $800 billion, which some analysts suggest doesn’t exactly give the US the strongest hand in negotiations.
Michael Froman, deputy US National Security Adviser for International Economic Affairs, said that the US's massive debt had "no impact whatsoever" on negotiations and was never raised in conversations.
"The president dealt with every issue on his agenda in a very direct way," Froman insisted.
That included President Obama politely pressing the issue of human rights -- even if Chinese government officials emphasized their own views of matters.
"I spoke to President Hu about America’s bedrock beliefs that all men and women possess certain fundamental human rights," President Obama said. "We do not believe these principles are unique to America but rather they are universal rights and that they should be available to all peoples, to all ethnic and religious minorities."
Said President Hu, "the two sides reaffirmed the fundamental principle of respecting each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Neither sides supports any attempts by any force to undermine this principle. We will continue to act in the spirit of equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each other's internal affairs, and engage in dialogue and exchanges on such issues as human rights and religion in order to enhance understanding, reduce differences and build common ground."
Asked how President Obama pressed the issue of human rights, Bader told ABC News that the US is most "persuasive if we have our own house in order."
President Obama's presidential order to close the detainee center at Guantanamo Bay is an example of how he is working hard "to correct and improve the image of the United States on human rights," Bader said, which makes his appeals to China more impactful than when the "salesman is not persuasive." The president told China how the US has been strengthened by such values, Bader said.
As for nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation, and climate change, "we believe we have on this trip successfully moved these issues forward," the senior administration official said. "We were not expecting any major breaththroughs. Diplomacy is incremental."
-- jpt