Let them eat caviar!
After a hard day at the palace making speeches about poverty and the economic crisis, world leaders retired to a luxurious banquet at a czarist estate where they were entertained by costumed Russian performers in a style that might make Marie Antoinette jealous.
Russian President and genial party host Vladimir Putin put on a lavish spread for President Obama and the G20 summit members Thursday night at the Peterhof Grand Palace, where Catherine the Great clinked champagne glasses with her aristocratic 18th-century subjects.
But Obama flew home Friday night after failing in an unscheduled, 20-minute face-to-face meeting to budge Putin’s opposition to proposed US airstrikes in Syria.
“It was a constructive, meaningful, cordial conversation,” Putin said, but added, “We hear one another, and understand the arguments. But we don’t agree.”
“Will we help Syria? We will,” Putin told a summit-closing news conference in St. Petersburg. “We are already helping them. We are supplying weapons and we are cooperating in the economic sphere.”
Obama appeared to have no more international support than before the summit — and may have lost ground.
French President Francois Hollande, the most hawkish US ally on Syria, suddenly said Friday he would wait until the results of a UN investigation into the Aug. 21 sarin gas attack are released before deciding whether to intervene militarily.
That would likely push any joint US-French strike out to mid- to late September.
Obama, clearly on the defensive, has scheduled a televised speech to the nation Tuesday in an effort to swing public opinion and get Congress to back his Syrian initiative. He acknowledged a resolution authorizing military action was in trouble on Capitol Hill.
“It’s a hard sell, but it’s something I believe in,” he said.
He refused three times to say what he would do if Congress votes against it.
“You’re not going to get a direct response,” he told reporters. “I’m not going to engage in parlor games.”
In the latest head count, the Senate is roughly evenly divided over the resolution, but House members widely oppose it. But about half of the 433 House members and a third of the 100-member Senate remain undecided.
With Geoff Earle