Obama Jets Into London on Last Leg of His World Tour

The United States presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, arrived in the United Kingdom Friday night on the final leg of his high-profile globe-trotting tour; which had taken him to Germany, France, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territory, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Illinois Senator, who cruised into the UK in a special plane emblazoned with the words “Change We Can Believe in”, was mobbed on arrival by hundreds of fans as over 300,000 people lined the streets of London to hail the Black symbol / political legend.

The tour; aimed at boosting his foreign policy credentials, accorded all politicians from both the ruling Labour Party and opposition parties in the country a face-to-face encounter at Downing Street early Saturday morning, with the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the former Premier Tony Blair and the opposition Tory Conservative leader David Cameron present.

During his thought-provoking speech, Obama admitted before the teaming audience that the US and Europe had drifted apart and pledged to work to restore close ties on the basis of trust.

He defined partnership and co-operation among nations as the only way to protect global security, calling for revitalized ties between Washington and Europe.

He however, regretted that America was now too often seen in Europe as “part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right”.

Apparently wary of the skepticism his African background has generated among a cross section of world political pundits, Obama quipped that: “The burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together.”

“If we’re honest, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart and forgotten our shared destiny”, he emphasised.

Obama, widely seen as a highly-popular political figure, faces Republican John McCain in November’s presidential election.

Source African Press Agency

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