With
an entourage of 500 staff, an armour-plated limousine and a fleet of
decoy helicopters, America's new president will arrive for his first
visit to Britain amid huge razzmatazz on Tuesday for the G20 summit.
But it will be his closed-door meetings with world leaders that are
likely to prove the most significant of the trip.
Britain will get its first chance to see Barack Obama
this week when a White House cavalcade - complete with armoured
limousines, helicopters, 200 US secret service staff and a six-doctor
medical team - sweeps into the UK.Obama will fly into London for his first
visit to the UK as president of the United States on Tuesday to take part in
the G20 summit in the capital's Docklands area. He will not be travelling
light.More
than 500 officials and staff will accompany the president on his tour
this week - along with a mass of high-tech security equipment,
including the $300,000 presidential limousine, known as The Beast.
Fitted with night-vision camera, reinforced steel plating, tear- gas
cannon and oxygen tanks, the vehicle is the ultimate in heavy armoured
transport.In addition, a team from the White House kitchen will
travel with the president to prepare his food. As one official put it:
"When the president travels, the White House travels with him, right
down to the car he drives, the water he drinks, the gasoline he uses,
the food he eats. America is still the sole superpower and the
president must have the ability to handle any crisis, anywhere, any
time."US security teams have already carried out three visits to
prepare for Obama's first official visit to Britain. The first was a
"site survey", the second a "pre-advance visit" which was carried out
to pick sites that the president would visit. Finally there was the
"advance trip", which took place last week. Its purpose was to set up
equipment, sweep venues for electronic bugs, test food for poison and
measure air quality for bacteria.Obama will start his first
presidential visit to Europe when he steps down from the US
presidential jet, Air Force One, at Stansted airport on Tuesday. The
Boeing 747-200B is fitted with its own gym, electronic defence units
and shielding to protect its complex communication devices from
radiation from nuclear blasts. Among the officials on the flight will
be a military officer carrying America's nuclear missile launch codes.Obama
will then be flown to central London in a VH-3D helicopter known as
Marine One. Again, high-tech security will dominate his journey. Marine
One is fitted with flares that can be fired to confuse heat-seeking
missiles and always flies in groups containing several identical decoy
helicopters.While in town, the president will be guarded by more
than 200 US secret servicemen - easily identifiable by their shirt-cuff
radios and Ray-Ban sunglasses. Obama has already had some time to get
used their attention. It was decided 18 months ago, when he was still a
presidential candidate, that his African-American background put him at
particular risk of an assassination attempt and he was provided with
his security guards.And should anything befall the President, a
White House medical unit will be at hand to provide emergency care. The
team consists of surgeons, nurses and other medical personnel and
carries supplies of blood of the type AB, the president's blood group.
At the same time, Obama will be constantly minded by his personal aide
Reggie Love, who dials his BlackBerry, fetches his jacket and tie and
supplies him with snacks. First Lady Michelle Obama will also have a
coterie of assistants, including a secretary, a press officer and
several bodyguards.It is a striking presence and shows that, for
the next few days, London, not Washington, will be the beating heart of
American foreign policy. At the end of the week Obama and his massive
retinue will head off for meetings in France, Germany and the Czech
Republic, although not before he has indulged in an unprecedented
whirlwind of diplomatic activity - he and his advisers will not just be
involved in complex summit negotiations, but will also be camped out in
London conducting a series of individual high-level mini-summits with
the most powerful leaders in the world.Indeed, despite all the
heat and fury over this week's G20, the most important work might
actually emerge from the meetings that Obama and his team have
scheduled on the side, far away from the debate over the economic
crisis. In effect, if the G20 were a party with a guest list, then
Obama's series of mini-summits would be a VIP room; open only to a
select few powerful players and conducted firmly behind closed doors.The
schedule is hectic and the subjects are weighty. On Wednesday, Obama
will hold his first bilateral talks with President Hu Jintao of China.
The meeting of America's first black president at a time of almost
unprecedented economic crisis with the leader of the world's foremost
rising power is historic. It comes at a time when China has been
asserting its international role and taking on the US by talking of
replacing the dollar as the main international currency and having a
recent naval showdown with a US spy ship in the South China Sea. On the
same day, Obama will also meet Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev,
again in the first face-to-face talks between the two. Subjects up for
discussion will include ways to co-operate to limit Iran's nuclear
ambitions and debate over plans for a US missile shield that Russia
views as a hostile act.But that will be just the beginning. On
Thursday, Obama will hold his first personal meeting with India's prime
minister, Manmohan Singh. Their discussions will be crucial, given the
fact that the explosive situation in India's neighbour, Pakistan, is
the most pressing foreign policy concern of Obama's administration.
Then, just to add another massively complex problem to an already
exhaustive list, Obama will hold bilateral talks with the South Korean
president, Lee Myung-bak. That chat comes against the backdrop of an
increasingly erratic North Korea, which is threatening to attack the
South and is moving to launch a long-range missile which Japan has said
it might try to shoot down. "He does have a huge amount of challenges
to try to tackle," said Larry Haas, a political commentator and former
aide in the Clinton White House.That is putting it mildly. But
Obama is far from alone in dealing with his intense schedule. At his
London "diplomatic base camp" will be an array of the best and the
brightest from his new administration. Chief among them will be former
rival Hillary Clinton, now secretary of state and the public face of
American diplomacy. His famously combative chief of staff, Rahm
Emanuel, will also be travelling to London on Air Force One. Obama's
economic team includes Larry Summers, head of the National Economic
Council, and Christina Romer, chairman of the Council of Economic
Advisers.The reasoning behind Obama's sudden flurry of
international diplomacy is complex and only partly explained by the
number of thorny problems in need of attention. In fact, Obama is
cramming so much diplomacy into such a short time because so far his
concerns have all been domestic. "Even when his attention has to be
focused on foreign policy, his mind is still bound to be on the thing
that really matters: the American economy," said Haas. Indeed Obama has
been so consumed by efforts to stop and then solve America's domestic
woes that the White House has barely had time to put its mind to
international affairs. The London meetings offer a rare opportunity to
do just that in a highly compressed time frame. "This is his time to
make his pitch to world leaders," said Christian Weller, a senior
fellow at the Centre for American Progress. It also offers a
brief break from dealing with domestic woes, where Obama's popularity
has been slipping slightly in the face of the scandal over AIG bonuses
and political splits over his huge proposed budget. Holding
high-powered meetings with world leaders will allow Obama to remind
Americans how much the rest of the world still admires him. It will
also be good for the leaders who meet him as they play to domestic
audiences. "Personally, I think every one of those leaders wants to sit
down and get a photo opportunity with Obama," said Dan Mitchell, a
senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "The mere fact that he is the new
president has still got something special about it abroad."The entourageApart
from the 200 secret service personnel who will follow Obama on his
European tour, the president's entourage will also include
representatives of the White House Military Office, the White House
Transportation Agency, the White House Medical Unit, the Marine Corps
Helicopter Squadron, the State Department Presidential Travel Support
Service, the US Information Agency, the Immigration and Naturalisation
Service and the Customs Service.In addition, there will be staff
from the White House kitchen ready to turn out a quick burger should
the president suddenly feel peckish.Michelle Obama will have
eight of her own staff, including a secretary, a press officer and
bodyguards. And Obama's personal aide Reggie Love - called by the
president "the kid brother I never had" - will be at hand to provide
pens, Nicorette gum, throat lozenges, tea or even aspirins.The BeastWith
its armour-plated body and doors, a raised roof, and reinforced steel
and aluminium, The Beast will be Obama's official car. It boasts a
titanium and ceramic superstructure and a sealed interior forming a
"panic room" capable of shielding him from even a chemical weapons
attack. Equipped with a night-vision camera and an armoured petrol tank
filled with foam to prevent explosion should it suffer a direct hit, it
also has pump-action shotguns, tear-gas cannon, oxygen tanks and
bottles of the president's blood. Its tyres allow it to keep driving
even if they have been punctured.Marine OneObama will
be ferried from Stansted to the US ambassador's residence in Regent's
Park, London, in a VH-3D helicopter. For security reasons, helicopters
are now preferred to motorcades, which are also dearer and more
difficult to organise. Much of the current fleet of 19 presidential
helicopters was built in the 1970s and after 11 September 2001, when it
was decided faster and safer helicopters were needed. But last month
Obama said his current presidential helicopter was "perfectly
adequate", a clear sign he is ready to cancel a multibillion-pound
contract to replace it.Air Force OneUsing the most
famous air traffic control call sign of any US aircraft, Air Force One,
the president will arrive in his customised Boeing 747-200B series
aircraft.Beyond its armoured glass in all windows, Obama will
have dined in the presidential suite and could even have worked out in
his personal gym and taken a shower.The aircraft has been
designed with security as its priority and is equipped with
armour-plated wings capable of withstanding a nuclear blast from the
ground, flares to confuse enemy missiles and electric defence systems
able to jam enemy radar. Mirror-ball technology in the wings is able to
scramble infra-red guidance systems. More than 200 miles of wiring are
specially shielded from electromagnetic interference caused by a
nuclear attack.Should the president feel the need to retaliate
offensively, Obama is able to launch a nuclear strike while flying. The
aircraft, among the most photographed in the world, has 85 telephones,
19 televisions, computer suites and faxes to ensure Obama stays in
touch with the outside world. At the rear of the aircraft is Obama's
travelling press corps.Secret ServiceMore than 200
Secret Service staff will protect the president during the trip,
instantly recognisable by their dark business suits, sunglasses and
communication earpieces.John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George
W Bush were attacked while appearing in public. Kennedy was killed and
Reagan seriously injured, while Bush survived when a hand grenade
thrown towards his podium failed to detonate.Secret Service
personnel have made three missions to the UK during which they have
swept venues for bugging devices, tested food for contamination and
measured air quality for bacteria. Obama was offered bodyguards over a
year ago following concern that his African-American roots made him a
target.
