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Obama Addresses Youth in Belfast Obama Addresses Youth in Belfast
(about 13 hours later)
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — President Obama on Monday opened a three-day diplomatic trip to Northern Ireland and Germany not with other world leaders but with young residents of this once strife-torn city, urging them to build on the peace that America helped broker 15 years ago. ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland — After a two-hour meeting on Monday that left both leaders looking tense and discomfited, President Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, disagreed about how to respond to rising bloodshed in Syria and called only for negotiations between the government and rebels that are given little chance of success.
“For you are the first generation in this land to inherit more than just the bitter prejudices of the past. You are the inheritors of a just and hard-earned peace,” Mr. Obama told more than 2,000 people, many of them teenagers in school uniforms who stood for hours in a chilly morning drizzle to get through security checkpoints into the Waterfront Hall convention center. “Of course our opinions do not coincide,” Mr. Putin told reporters after he and Mr. Obama met privately here on the sidelines of the annual summit meeting of the Group of 8 industrial nations. On that Mr. Obama agreed, saying, “We have different perspectives on the problem.”
“There was a time people couldn’t have imagined Northern Ireland hosting a gathering of world leaders, as you are today,” he added. But remarks from other leaders on the opening day of the international forum made clear that it is Mr. Putin who is isolated here in his support for the government of President Bashar al-Assad, after more than two years of conflict that Mr. Obama estimated has cost the lives of more than 100,000 Syrians.
After the address, Mr. Obama planned to head to the Lough Erne golf resort in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, for the start of the annual meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized nations. There, talk of the war in Syria was expected to dominate the economic and security agenda. There will also be a separate meeting on Monday between Mr. Obama and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which, unlike other Group of 8 nations, backs the Syrian ruler, Bashar al-Assad. While the United States and other Group of 8 nations are providing aid to the rebels, and debating more lethal assistance, Russia is a key arms provider to Syria’s government.
Mr. Obama’s first stop after arriving with his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, was Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. Also, according to White House officials, in his meeting with Mr. Obama, Mr. Putin reflected his skepticism of claims from the United States, France and Britain that the Assad government had used chemical weapons against the rebels. While Mr. Obama told reporters that he and Mr. Putin share an interest in “securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they’re neither used nor are they subject to proliferation,” Mr. Putin made no mention of chemical weapons in his account of their meeting.
Most of those in his audience were young children when the Good Friday agreement was signed here in April 1998 and approved by voters the following month. The deal brought an uneasy peace after years of armed conflict between Protestants, who wanted to maintain Northern Ireland’s union with Britain, and Catholics, who wanted to join the Republic of Ireland to the south. Their public remarks — delivered as the two men sat side by side, each repeatedly clenching his jaw and looking at the carpet — suggested that the only prospect for a breakthrough on Syria is through talks previously planned to take place in Geneva. “We agreed to push the parties to the negotiations table,” Mr. Putin said.
Mr. Obama acknowledged there were still “wounds that haven’t healed, and communities where tensions and mistrust hangs in the air.” But mostly he hailed the normalcy in Belfast and the economic growth, despite Europe’s recent hard times, that was evident in the new high-rises and developments visible from the glass-walled convention center. Yet the chances of such talks taking place, much less succeeding, are considered slim since recent advances by Syrian government forces leave Mr. Assad with little incentive to give ground to rebel forces. And because the rebels include extremist militias, the United States and other anti-Assad nations are divided on providing arms to them.
“These daily moments of life in a bustling city and a changing country, they may seem ordinary to many of you — that's what makes it so extraordinary,” he told them. “For that's what your parents and grandparents dreamt for all of you — to travel without the burden of checkpoints or roadblocks or seeing soldiers on patrol. To enjoy a sunny day free from the ever-present awareness that violence could blacken it at any moment. To befriend or fall in love with whomever you want.” The presidents found some agreement on another divisive issue, Iran and its nuclear program. Both agreed that the victory of Iran’s president-elect, Hassan Rowhani, could mean that “there will be opportunities to solve the Iranian nuclear problem,” Mr. Putin said.
He urged them to appreciate how much things have changed, “because for years, few conflicts in the world seemed more intractable than the one here in Northern Ireland. And when peace was achieved here, it gave the entire world hope. The world rejoiced in your achievement — especially in America.” Northern Ireland’s example, he added, is a “blueprint” for the world’s other regions of conflict. Mr. Obama said he and Mr. Putin had agreed to extend the so-called Nunn-Lugar agreement, which since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago has provided for cooperative efforts to reduce old nuclear stockpiles in Russia. He called the extension “an example of the kind of constructive, cooperative relationship that moves us out of a cold-war mind-set.”
With his own domestic politics in mind, Mr. Obama praised Northern Ireland’s Catholic and Protestant leaders, a number of whom packed a balcony, for their power sharing — “as someone who knows firsthand how politics can encourage division and discourage cooperation.” But, he told his young listeners, it is average citizens who ensure the peace. Administration officials acknowledged that the United States had agreed to modify the agreement, in response to the Russians’ objections that its system for dismantling nuclear and chemical weapons in former Soviet states is an outdated interference in their nation’s affairs.
“Whether you are a good neighbor to someone from the other side of past battles — that’s up to you. Whether you treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve — that’s up to you. Whether you let your kids play with kids who attend a different church — that’s your decision,” he said. “The terms of peace may be negotiated by political leaders, but the fate of peace is up to each of us.” There was no public mention of human rights, though administration officials said that Mr. Obama had raised the issue privately. He also agreed to visit Moscow in September, when he is to travel to St. Petersburg for the annual Group of 20 summit, an expanded forum that includes the Group of 8. The Group of 8 here also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
He added that “the United States of America will support you every step of the way.” Mr. Obama sought to inject some lightness into what his aides called “a businesslike relationship” with Mr. Putin, and certainly the presidents’ joint appearance was not as tense as a year ago, when they met at an international forum in Mexico. Then, too, Syria was a point of contention.
But a year later, Mr. Obama seemed to be seeking a less divisive, more pragmatic, tone. He began by saying that he had thanked Mr. Putin for Russia’s cooperation in the investigation after the Boston Marathon bombings in April. And he ended by recounting a jocular exchange about the tolls of aging on their athletic pursuits — golf in Mr. Obama’s case, judo in Mr. Putin’s.
That only drew an awkward reply from Mr. Putin, who said, according to the translator, “The president wants to relax me with his statement of age.”
With the crisis in Syria dominating the gathering here at a secluded golf resort, discussion continued among all the leaders over dinner. One European official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given diplomatic sensitivities, suggested that the other leaders wanted to persuade Russia to stand aside if it could not join in a summit communiqué against Mr. Assad.
Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, the meeting’s host, has pushed hard to help the Syrian opposition but has not agreed to arm them. The dinner agenda called for discussing humanitarian assistance, ways to isolate extremists among the rebels, a declaration against use of chemical weapons and preparations for a change of government.
Mr. Cameron, who faces opposition in his coalition government to arming rebels, said: “I am as worried as anyone else about elements of the Syrian opposition who are extremists, who support terrorism, who are a great danger to our world. The question is, what do we do about that?”
“My argument is that we shouldn’t accept that the only alternative to Assad is terrorism and violence,” he added. “We should be on the side of Syrians who want a democratic and peaceful future for their country and one without the man who is currently using chemical weapons against them.”
But Mr. Putin made his contrary stance graphically plain before the summit meeting, at a Sunday meeting in London with Mr. Cameron. Asked if he has blood on his hands for helping to arm the Assad government, he said of the rebels — apparently alluding to a video of an anti-Assad fighter seeming to eat part of a victim, “One hardly should back those who kill their enemies and, you know, eat their organs.”
The two-day meeting, which ends on Tuesday, is also touching on economic policy, which is typically a focus. The leaders, at Mr. Cameron’s urging, are discussing how to reduce illegal tax evasion and legal tax avoidance by multinational corporations. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama will travel to Berlin for a state visit with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and speak to Berliners at the historic Brandenburg Gate.
Arriving early Monday in Northern Ireland with his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters, Mr. Obama first spoke not with world leaders but to about 2,000 mostly teenage residents of once strife-torn Belfast.
He urged them to keep the peace between Protestants and Catholics that was secured 15 years ago, with American help, by the Good Friday Agreement. “You are the first generation in this land to inherit more than just the bitter prejudices of the past,” he said. “You are the inheritors of a just and hard-earned peace.”

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Enniskillen, and David Herszenhorn from Moscow.