Next step in Obama charm offensive: Dinner with Republican senators

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will launch a new round of schmoozing with his political opponents when he sits down to dinner with a dozen Republican senators on April 10.

Obama has been trying to gain Republican cooperation on a host of items on his second-term agenda including a deficit-reduction package, an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws and a tightening of gun regulations.

Criticized in his first term for keeping his opponents at arms-length, Obama is taking a different tack in the early months of his second term.

He and a group of Republican senators had dinner at a Washington hotel earlier this month and the president then visited Capitol Hill to talk to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

The April 10 dinner is being organized by Republican Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, according to Isakson's office and a White House official.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Paul Simao)

View the original article here

Obama's Charm Offensive Could Work, Lawmakers Say

WASHINGTON - President Obama's newly initiated charm offensive with Republicans just might work as he tries to resolve the recently enacted sequester cuts and attempts to avert another budget showdown near the end of the month, lawmakers on Capitol Hill said today.

"If we're going to really get to an agreement, this is a good step," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News' "This Week." "You have to start meeting with people. You have to start developing relationships. You've got to spend a fair amount of time figuring out what we agree on first."

"I'm welcoming with open arms. I think the president is tremendously sincere. I don't think this is just a political change in tactic," Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who called the president "my friend" said on NBC's "Meet the Press.

"It's time to start leading, and the way you do that is quit poking your finger in people's eyes and start building relationships, and I think he's got a great chance to accomplish a big deal," he said. "But, you know, you've got a lot of scabs and sores on people that it's going to take a while for that to heal."

Coburn and Johnson were among the 12 Republican senators who dined with Obama at the Jefferson Hotel earlier this week - the president's first overture in his GOP courtship. On Thursday, he sat down for lunch at the White House with Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget committee, and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the committee, a meeting Ryan described as his first ever detailed discussion with the president.

"This is the first time I've ever had a conversation with the president lasting more than, say, two minutes or televised exchanges," Ryan said on "Fox News Sunday." "I've never really had a conversation with him, on these issues before. I am excited that we had the conversation. We had a very frank exchange. We come from different perspectives. I ran against him in the last election."

Ryan said the budget plan he will unveil later this week will "promote repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a better system."

Next week, the president is expected to continue his wooing of lawmakers, traveling to Capitol Hill over three days as he attends each party's weekly meetings.

"He's coming to the House conference, which I think is positive. He's only done that once before, but he should come and listen and communicate and try to find where we can find common ground, where can we bring that accountability back to government. That's what Republicans are looking for," House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"Any time that both parties are talking, it's a good thing," he said. "Now, this should have happened four years ago. I'm glad it's happening now. But is this about politics or is this genuine?"

Democrats also said the president's outreach was a positive step.

"I think the meetings are a good idea because you understand each other better and you may get a measure of courage," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on CNN's "State of the Union. "All of us come here to get a job done for the American people, and certainly that is the case with the president of the United States. He's been very bipartisan in his approach.

"These meetings are not something to say, well I'll do this with you now, and I'll do that with them later," she said. "I think it is let's get some things done together to make elections less important. Let's come together for the benefit of the American people."

But as the president makes strides to meet with Republicans in the coming weeks, Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said he doesn't expect the outreach to result in an agreement immediately, saying on NBC's "Meet the Press," "I hope that he's genuine, but I don't think we'll be doing the Harlem Shake anytime soon."

Also Read

View the original article here

Opposition leader visits Syria amid Assad offensive

AMMAN (Reuters) - Opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib visited rebel-held towns in north Syria for the first time on Sunday as rebel fighters seized an army outpost from President Bashar al-Assad's forces outside the contested northern city of Aleppo, activists said.

The capture of the police academy at Khan al-Asal, used by Assad's forces as an artillery base to support troops still holding around 40 percent of the northern city, came after days of fighting in which rebels killed 150 soldiers, while sustaining heavy casualties, they said.

In an attempt to consolidate those gains on the ground and strengthen links between Assad's military and civilian foes, Alkhatib crossed into northern Syria from neighboring Turkey and toured the towns of Jarablus and Minbij.

Earlier he attended a meeting of 220 rebel commanders and opposition campaigners in the Turkish city of Gaziantep to elect an administration for Aleppo province, home to 6 million people.

Alkhatib, a 52-year-old former preacher at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, was chosen in November to head the coalition of political opposition to Assad. He won modest pledges of support for the rebels from Western and Arab ministers in Rome last week.

He has also said he is ready for talks with representatives of Assad's government to help find a political solution to a conflict which erupted nearly two years ago and has descended into a civil war in which around 70,000 people have been killed.

Assad, in an interview with British newspaper The Sunday Times, said his government was prepared to talk to fighters who lay down their weapons but insisted he would not leave the country or step aside under foreign pressure.

"We are ready to negotiate with anyone, including militants who surrender their arms," he said according to a transcript released by state media. However there would be no talks with "terrorists who are determined to carry weapons," he added.

"We have to be clear about this. We have opposition that are political entities and we have armed terrorists. We can engage in dialogue with the opposition but we cannot engage in dialogue with terrorists. We fight terrorists."

Alkhatib's opposition coalition says that any talks must focus on Assad's departure -- the objective of the 23-month uprising -- while rebel leaders have set even tougher conditions, insisting he depart before they start talks.

But Assad, who inherited power from his father in 2000, said he was not going anywhere. "No patriotic person will think about living outside his country. I am like any other patriotic Syrian," he told the newspaper.

In response to calls from some Western and Arab governments for him to go, Assad replied: "Only (the) Syrian people can tell the president: stay or leave, come or go."

BASE CAPTURED

Opposition activists say the capture of Khan al-Asal base, 7 km (5 miles) southwest of Aleppo, comes as a boost to a joint opposition military command set up last year with Western and Arab backing to try to counter the growing military prowess of the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra.

"It is a locally made victory achieved by a myriad of brigades from the rural west of Aleppo. It shows that you don't have to have a foreign name to achieve victory," activist Abu Mujahed told Reuters from the area.

He said the brigades who took the site were mostly Islamist but did not subscribe to al Qaeda ideology. He added that an army academy on the western edge of the city is the last major barrier between the rebels and Assad's forces inside Aleppo.

Video footage showed Colonel Abdelbasset Tawil of the joint command of the Free Syrian army reading a statement declaring the seizure of the site among a group of commander of various brigades. "These honorable forces will continue to fight until the downfall of the Assad gang," Tawil said.

The walled complex at Khan al-Asal was turned into an army barrack from where artillery and rocket launchers gave cover for Assad's forces holding around 40 percent of Aleppo, the opposition sources said.

Video footage released by the rebel Farouq Brigade showed a rebel-driven tank firing at the base before its capture. Other videos showed fighters touring the site after it fell, stamping on a large picture of Assad and shouting: "We will get to you."

Further east, Iraqi military sources said Iraq shut a border crossing with Syria on Sunday after rebels seized the Syrian side of the frontier post close to the Syrian town of Yaarabiya.

"Iraqi authorities were ordered to shut off Rabia border crossing until further notice because of the Syrian government's lack of control over the other side of the post," police said.

Military sources said blast walls now blocked off the border crossing and employees had been evacuated, though both sides of the crossing were calm and there was no sign of Syrian troops or the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces across the border.

In Amman, Jordan's national carrier Royal Jordanian said it had stopped flying over Syrian air space for security reasons. The airline stopped its regular flights to Damascus last year along with some other carriers.

(Editing by Dominic Evans and Stephen Powell)

View the original article here