Barack Obama-Arroyo Meeting: Issues on Myanmar, North Korea and Mindanao

(cross-posted over at http:www//newphilrevolution.com) It was sup­posed to be a 45 minute meet­ing, yet, Mrs. Glo­ria Macapagal-Arroyo’s “his­toric” meet­ing with iconic US Pres­i­dent Barack Obama only took 30 min­utes, half of it spent in a joint press con­fer­ence. There was how­ever, a 15 minute joint brief­ing between del­e­gates from the Philip­pines and some US offi­cials prior to the Obama-Arroyo meet­ing inside the Oval Office.

Before the meet­ing, Arroyo first met US House speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Barack wore a dark grey busi­ness suit while Arroyo wore her sig­na­ture “red dress” with her designer black bag in her side. Barack sat at the right side fac­ing the media while Arroyo sat at the left.

The meet­ing was described by reporters who cov­ered the event as “cor­dial”, not “warm”. Obama com­mented on the “good progress” of Arroyo in deal­ing with counter-terrorism, espe­cially in ini­ti­at­ing a peace process in Min­danao, that Obama described as ” …has the poten­tial of bring­ing peace and sta­bil­ity to the heart of the Philip­pines that has been wracked by insta­bil­ity for too long.”

Barack Obama also praised the Arroyo admin­is­tra­tion for its strong stance in regional issues, such as the government’s strong stance in issues relat­ing to Myanmar.

” We are very grate­ful for the strong voice that the Philip­pines took in a range of issues including…human rights vio­la­tions that have hap­pened in the coun­try of Burma, to the prob­lems that we’ve been see­ing with respect to the nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion in North Korea.”

Barack said he looks for­ward to his trav­els to South­east Asia. He even­tu­ally named the Philip­pines as the “coor­di­nat­ing coun­try” with the US in its rela­tion­ship with ASEAN or the Asso­ci­a­tion of South­east Asian Nations, which he describes as the “pri­mary organ of nations for South­east Asian countries”.

” In addi­tion, the Philip­pines is to head the non-proliferation treaty meetings…so we will be very busy together.…especially in deal­ing with the nuclear proliferation...”

Barack said the US gov­ern­ment looks for­ward for more strength­en­ing of rela­tions with the Philip­pines ” in the years to come.”

For her part, Mrs. Arroyo praised Obama for shar­ing sim­i­lar views with regards to Myan­mar and North Korea, which she describes as having a "nuclear adventurist" approach. She also lauded Obama’s lead­er­ship in efforts to solve the prob­lem of cli­mate change.