White House does damage control after Sarkozy-Obama exchange

White House does damage control after Sarkozy-Obama exchange
Los Angeles Times, November 9, 2011
Posted: 2011-11-15 14:23:04
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-sarkozy-20111109,0,2922780.s...

The White House is suggesting that President Obama hasn’t damaged his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, following an embarrassing moment in France last week when he was overheard making dismissive remarks about the Israeli leader. As fallout from the episode mounts, the White House had been saying little about the exchange between Obama and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, at the G20 summit in Cannes. The two men were speaking in private, apparently unaware that their microphones were still on. “I can’t stand to see him anymore, he’s a liar,’’ Sarkozy told Obama, according to a French translation of the exchange. “You are fed up with him, but me, I have to deal with him every day,’’ Obama replied. Briefing reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Ben Rhodes, a spokesman for the National Security Council, took a question about the flap. Obama “has a very close working relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu,’’ Rhodes said. “They speak very regularly.’’ Indeed, Rhodes said, Obama has “probably spent more time one on one’’ with Netanyahu than with any other world leader. Most of what happens at international summit meetings is off limits to the public. So the Obama-Sarkozy exchange is being treated as a rare window into the unvarnished thinking of two world leaders.

Note: For more on this story from the BBC, click here.