Foreign Reaction to Obama’s Claim Is Favorable

Within hours of Senator Barack Obama claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, the world’s attention switched from a primary campaign that had riveted outsiders to a presidential contest that raises deep concerns about where and how America will lead the world.

Even though Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not immediately concede defeat, Mr. Obama’s claim shifted the focus from the tantalizing question of the primaries — were the Democrats prepared to make history on matters of race and gender — to the looming battle between relative youth and relative age, between experience and renewal and, most of all, between the untested champion of the Democrats to the nominee of a Republican Party whose global image has been scarred by the war in Iraq and fear of neo-conservative adventures.

An initial sampling of opinion in Europe and Asia suggested a generally upbeat response. Michael Tomasky in The Guardian newspaper in Britain, said Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, “wasn’t getting an avalanche of press as Obama and Clinton duked it out, but the press he was getting was entirely positive, based on the story he was telling about himself.”

“Obama has to change that. He needs to put McCain on the defensive over his support for the Iraq war and for wanting to keep alive George Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy,” Mr. Tomasky, the U.S. editor of The Guardian newspaper, wrote. “The real charge here is ‘flip-flopper,’ since McCain originally voted against those cuts.”

But the issue of race was by no means forgotten. Indeed, for many, the idea of an African-American in the White House for the first time seemed a concept that could potentially presage a profound shift in America’s sense of itself.

Gerard Baker, the U.S. editor of The Times of London, wrote: “In 220 years a country that has steadily multiplied in diversity, where ethnic minorities and women have risen to the very highest positions in so many fields of human life, has chosen a succession of 42 white men as its leader. For good measure, the vice presidency, the only other nationally directly elected position in the US government, has been held by a succession of 46 white males.”

“But last night, in a tumultuous break with this long history, the ultimate realization of the American dream moved a little closer, and a black man became his party’s nominee for the presidency,” Mr. Baker wrote.

Word of Mr. Obama’s claim, following primaries in Montana and South Dakota, came too late for some European newspaper deadlines, but breakfast radio and television shows, along with many websites, gave his announcement almost the same attention as it drew in the United States.

Some dwelt on the choices facing Mrs. Clinton.

In Germany, Reymer Kluever, a correspondent for the Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung, wrote: “If Clinton continues in the coming days with her confrontational stance, she truly risks what she herself has said she wishes to avoid at all costs: the division of her party its supporters. That is something America really does not need.”

But some governments were constrained from comment by diplomatic custom and by the fact that Mrs. Clinton had not yet conceded.

China, for instance, made no immediate official comment. But Mr. Obama’s win was on all the main Chinese news websites, including The People’s Daily and The China Daily. The country’s most popular web portal, Sina.com, posted an Obama story on the front of its news page.

Sina also conducted a poll around the question: Do you think Obama will win the presidency — yes, no or hard to say?

By mid-afternoon Wednesday, 20,000 people had responded and 55 percent predicted he would win, 32 percent predicted he would lose and 13 percent responded with “hard to say.”

That generally favorable impression was echoed in Pakistan where Mr. Obama’s speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, came on television at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning.

“It should bring a good change in relations with Pakistan” should he win the presidency, said Munaway Akhtar, a prominent lawyer specializing in international arbitration in the capital, Islamabad. “Pakistan has always been friendly to the United States but the people have never benefited, the rulers have always benefited. Hopefully, that would change with Obama.”

Wamiq Zuberi, the editor of The Business Recorder, the biggest business-oriented newspaper, said he believed Pakistanis were pleased. “Everyone is in fact impressed with the historical moment, that it is the first time an AfricanAmerican has won the nomination of a party.”

There was a prevailing sentiment, he said, that Mr. Obama would better serve Pakistan’s interests. “If Obama would become president there would be a push for democracy in Pakistan.”

A former senior Pakistani diplomat, who was briefly ambassador to the United States, Tariq Fatemi, said that Mr. Obama’s “idealism” struck a chord with Pakistanis.

“Barack Obama would do very well in improving the image of the United States. He would position the United States more as a force for moral values rather than for brute force,” he said.

Jane Perlez in Islamabad, Jim Yardley in Beijing and Steffen Scholz in Berlin contributed reporting for this article.

June 5, 2008

By ALAN COWELL
LONDON —

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How important do you think international opinion is in the US Presidential campaign? Should it be important?

Do you think that the world view of the United States will be different depending on who wins the election?

What do you think of the reaction and poll in China?

Do you think that the issue of Obama's race is being made too important here?

Do you think that the United States should be concerned with improving its international image?

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