“I would like to convey my solidarity with the families of the victims”, Macri said. “Argentina once again condemns this kind of terrorist attack”.
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Obama said his top priority is to defeat ISIL. “It’s not because we’re not taking the threat serious, it’s because it’s challenging to find, identify very small groups of people who are willing to die themselves and can walk into a crowd and detonate a bomb…” There’s no more important item on my agenda than going after them and defeating them. “The issue is how do we do it in an intelligent way?”
Obama says he just left a country in Cuba that engages in such surveillance and the notion that the USA would do so “makes no sense”. “President Macri recognizes that we’re in a new era, and we have to look forward”.
Macri offers Obama a new ally in South America, a region where a strong leftist bloc turned its back on Washington over the past decade but where public opinion is now shifting toward the political center ground as governments grapple with graft scandals and an economic slowdown.
Obama, on a two-day visit to Argentina that marks a detente after years of tensions, said Argentina under Macri was poised to play a more influential role on the global stage, in settings like the G20 grouping of major economies.
Macri, who has removed foreign currency controls and export tariffs on most agricultural products and is close to sealing a deal with holdout creditors led by Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp, has said he expects Argentina’s change of direction to attract $20 billion in foreign investment this year.
Some groups have promised protests in Buenos Aires and Bariloche, a tourist city in southern Argentina where Obama will spend part of Thursday. “I always wanted to come to Argentina”.
US President Barack Obama and his family touched down in the early hours of Wednesday, to be welcomed by Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra.
At 13:30 the two presidents will hold a press conference at Casa Rosada, and later Obama will cross Plaza Mayo to Buenos Aires cathedral where he will pay tribute to General Jose de San Martin, Argentina’s national hero. Steps both nations agreed upon included early efforts to enforce the Paris Agreement on the environment, moving to reduce hydro-fluorocarbons, cut aviation emissions and increase the use of renewable energy.
“Our first objective is to build confidence and clearly we see it as a vote of confidence that the president is coming”, Pena said in an interview in the presidential palace. USA officials say Obama has been impressed by the pace of reform.
Obama’s visit will be met with backlash from some Argentines.
Thousands of Argentinians lined the streets of Buenos Aires and the Avenida del Libertador, a main thoroughfare through the city, to catch a glimpse of Obama’s motorcade on a crisp, sunny morning. The two-day visit comes as Macri has gone to great lengths to fix relations after years of antagonism by the previous administrations.
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“Cristina was very tough with the United States, accusing the US that all of Argentina’s problems were basically because of the worldwide markets, because of the USA government”, Catterberg said. He’ll also carve out time to memorialize victims of the “Dirty War”, an organized system of rounding up and killing dissidents during the 1970s and ’80s. Fliers in the western neighborhood of Almargo, pictured the USA flag with a similar message: “Get out Obama!”
