Nominee Talks to Afghan, Colombian Presidents, Also Confers With Kissinger
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
NEW YORK, Sept. 23 -- Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made her diplomatic debut Tuesday, meeting with two heads of state who traveled to New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.
Palin, who met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, engaged in small talk and policy discussions as part of her effort to augment her foreign policy credentials. Palin, who has traveled outside North America once, also met with former secretary of state Henry Kissinger at his New York office.
The campaign of Sen. John McCain sought to highlight the sessions with several photo ops, though they limited the news media's access, at one point barring print reporters from observing Palin's initial exchange with Karzai.
Shuttling from one meeting to another, Palin traveled across New York with the buzz of a high-profile personality. Her motorcade shut down traffic, and for a time police barred entry to her Midtown hotel. Tourists pulled out video cameras to film the Alaska governor, prompting several police vehicles to drive onto the sidewalk to protect the SUV in which she was riding. Traffic backed up, crowds gathered behind the barricades and a supporter yelled, "We love you, Sarah!"
Palin also received her first national security briefing on Tuesday from the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, and several of his aides -- a standard practice for the two parties' nominees.
In a briefing with reporters, Palin's senior foreign policy adviser, Stephen E. Biegun, said the governor did not issue policy pronouncements during the sessions with Karzai and Uribe, each of which lasted about half an hour. Biegun said her goals were "to establish a relationship and to listen." Meetings with foreign leaders, he added, "are a very important part of her being prepared on Day One."
Biegun and McCain's senior foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, accompanied Palin to Tuesday's sessions.
Palin will continue to meet with foreign leaders Wednesday when she sits down with some of the United States' closest allies in the developing world -- including Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- several of whom are personally friendly with McCain.
Pakistan's U.S. ambassador, Husain Haqqani (President Asif Ali Zardari will meet Palin on Wednesday), said officials from his country are eager to discuss the fight against terrorism with members of both the GOP and Democratic tickets.
"President Zardari is engaging with all candidates as part of his effort to strengthen the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, which is central to stabilizing a very dangerous region of the world," Haqqani said. "We would be interested in Governor Palin's thoughts, and we would happily answer her questions."
Palin's talks with the foreign leaders resemble the trip Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama took over the summer, when the first-term senator from Illinois met with military and foreign leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan, Britain, France and Germany. At the end of a trip designed to bolster his foreign policy credentials, Obama said: "The value to me of this trip is, hopefully, it gives voters a sense that I can in fact -- and do -- operate effectively on the international stage."
The Senate office of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday released a "partial list" showing that the senator from Delaware has met the leaders of nearly 60 countries, territories and international organizations. The list ran to 150 names and included nine Israeli prime ministers, four Soviet leaders and two Russian presidents, Pope John Paul II and the Dalai Lama.
Foreign diplomats said they knew little about Palin, especially compared with Biden, who serves as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"The assumption is that she has not had great international experience," said one diplomat from a major European country. "Apart from that, nobody knows her. Biden is quite a well-known figure" in his capital, the diplomat said. "He's been there many times. Palin, well, she is an absolute stranger."
In the brief moments when Palin was visible to the media -- after reporters protested, her aides allowed one print journalist to watch the first minute of her afternoon sessions -- she sought to forge a personal bond with Karzai.
The Afghan president told Palin about his young son, who was born in January 2007. With both of them smiling, and with Palin patting her heart at one point, Karzai told the governor that his son's name is "Mirwais, which means 'The Light of the House.' "
"Oh, nice," Palin replied.
"He is the only one we have," Karzai said.
Speaking later at the Asia Society, Karzai described his meeting with the vice presidential nominee as "very good. I found her quite a capable woman. She asked the right questions on Afghanistan." He added, "She was concerned and she said how can she help, so I'm very pleased with that meeting."
Karzai and Uribe each discussed the topic of energy with Palin, Biegun said, with both of them describing it as "a national security issue."
Palin also visited the offices of Kissinger, with whom she met for more than an hour. She talked with the former secretary of state about some of the United States' most sensitive international relationships, Biegun said, with countries such as Russia, Iran and China.
While Palin may not be well known overseas, she has captured the attention of many foreign leaders. British member of Parliament Hazel Blears, for instance, included Palin in remarks about how politics are turning off voters, made at a recent Labor Party conference in Manchester.
"I just think there is so much anti-politics -- not just in this country but around the world," Blears said. "One of the reasons why Sarah Palin has been such a phenomenon is because she's anti-politics, anti-Washington. Her politics are horrendous, but actually she's struck a chord with people -- 'I'm a maverick, I'm not part of those powerful people' -- and people identified with that."
A senior British official said that Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, protested Blears's remarks in a note to Britain's U.N. ambassador, John Sawers. But Grenell denied that, saying he merely sent a lighthearted e-mail to Britain's U.N. spokesman, Michael Hoare. "Mikey and I are very good friends and we talk politics all the time," he said.
Staff writers Colum Lynch at the United Nations and Karen DeYoung and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
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