| last updated: Saturday 26 July 2008, 06:21am |  Print this page |
Obama flies into the UK
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| Barack Obama |
Barack Obama has jetted into London for the final leg of a marathon overseas tour dubbed 'Obamania'.
The Democratic Party senator arrived in the UK from France for talks on Saturday with Prime Minister Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street.
Looking relaxed, Mr Obama emerged from a plane emblazoned with the words 'Change we can believe in'.
He was met by the US Ambassador and his wife, Robert and Maria Tuttle.
Mr Obama greeted waiting press with the words 'Hey, how are you?', before being whisked away in a waiting car to his central London hotel.
He will also meet Tory leader David Cameron and ex-PM Tony Blair before returning to the US, where he faces Republican John McCain in November's presidential election.
Earlier, the president called on Iran to move quickly to accept an offer of trade and technical incentives to halt its uranium enrichment programme.
Speaking at a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, Obama said Iran should not wait for the next US president to be elected to accept the offer from the six world powers.
'Iran should accept the proposals that President Sarkozy and the EU 3 plus 3 are presenting now. Don't wait for the next president because the pressure, I think, is only going to build,' he said.
Mr Sarkozy and Mr Obama joked about their common immigrant backgrounds as, respectively, the son of a Hungarian and of a Kenyan.
'France is happy to welcome Barack Obama, firstly because he's American and the French love Americans,' Mr Sarkozy said.
He stopped just short of actually endorsing the 46-year-old senator but made it clear he would be happy if he won the November presidential election.
'Good luck to Barack Obama. If it's him, France will be happy and if it's not him, France will be a friend of the United States of America,' he said.
Mr Obama repaid Mr Sarkozy in kind, praising him for his dynamism. 'I'm asking him what he eats so that I can find out how I can always have as much energy as this man beside me. He's on the move all the time,' he said.
He flew into Paris a day after a speech in Berlin, where he called for a renewed US-EU partnership with Europe.
© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
