Obama Will Stay At Indian Terror Attack Hotel

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's stay next week at the Indian hotel attacked by terrorists in 2008 is part of the White House's effort to show the U.S. commitment an important ally during his 10-day, four-country trip to Asia.

The 107-year-old Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai reopened for business in August, nearly two years after the siege that left 166 people dead across the city, including 31 at the hotel.

Obama will stay at the Taj on Nov. 6, his first night in India, and will discuss the attacks, the White House said Wednesday.

Obama's longest foreign trip as president also will take him to Indonesia, where he spent time as a boy; South Korea, host of this year's summit of major and emerging economic nations; and Japan, for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

Obama plans meetings with foreign leaders, including Chinese President Hu Jintao. That get-together comes at a time of rising economic and trade friction with China. Obama's itinerary doesn't include a stop in China, which Obama visited last year.

"It's a not a coincidence, necessarily, that we're going to four Asian democracies on this trip," said Obama's deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes. "We want to underscore the success of democracy in Asia and around the world."

By starting in India and devoting three full days there, Obama is seeking to promote a relationship with important ties to U.S. jobs and security.

The trip will follow right after the Nov. 2 elections that are expected to produce devastating results for Democrats. White House aides emphasized that Obama is not leaving U.S. concerns behind, and that U.S. jobs and the economy will be his focus throughout the trip.

White House aides tried to dismiss speculation that Obama is avoiding a well-known Indian temple so that he won't have to wear a head covering and perhaps add to misconceptions that he's a Muslim. Obama is Christian.

The president's advance team had reviewed the Golden Temple, a popular tourist stop in Amritsar, India. But it was dropped because Obama's schedule centers on Mumbai and New Delhi, aides said.

___

AP White House Correspondent Ben Feller contributed to this report.

Comments

[ko2ko2]

11:26 AM on 11/03/2010

Can someone please verify or refute these article, it is all over the web:

Obama spending 200Mil a Day for this trip!!!!!

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=obama+200+mil

[synergie]

10:00 PM on 11/03/2010

http://factcheck.org/2010/11/ask-factcheck-trip-to-mumbai/

There you go. It's much right wing hot air and silliness.

[Ermasdaughter]

04:49 PM on 10/29/2010

What's with the "crazed" looking picture? More antics from HP....

[tiredofpc]

06:06 AM on 10/29/2010

Hope to God that the security is better than it's been previously!

[vascopyjama]

04:03 AM on 10/29/2010

Staying at the site of a bloody massacre sounds more dramatic than saying he is staying at the Taj Mahal hotel.

[Tumunzahar]

09:35 PM on 10/30/2010

It's also a gigantic hotel. You could stay in it and be a block away from the massacre.

[Hill Dweller]

08:17 PM on 10/28/2010

Why post exactly where the president will be staying and when? Seems like he could use a little privacy sometimes.

[Rand]

10:46 AM on 10/29/2010

It's usually a matter of public record

[hey0there]

07:23 PM on 10/28/2010

Why is Obama dealing with a country when mothers devote their 8 year old daughters to a sex goddess & sell them into sex slavery for life?

[Rand]

10:48 AM on 10/29/2010

Possibly because they are the orld's most populous democracy


Possibly because your comment refers only to a few rare cases

Possibly because he doesn't share your bigotry

[Tenjikuronin]

12:29 AM on 10/30/2010

Huffington Post's resident Pakistani strikes again!

[kenhamlett]

03:47 PM on 10/28/2010

Good for the President. You do not give in to terrorists and let them change the manner in which you live your life.

[Ergon]

02:48 PM on 10/28/2010

I wish he'd visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar too, and don a turban just to say that America is more than the sum of its prejudices.

[LogicalMathMan]

01:47 PM on 10/28/2010

Some of the venom seems to be grossly misplaced vis a vis outsourcing of jobs to India. With globalization came the realization to most US corporations, that if a job is confined to reading no more than 8 pages of a script (call center jobs), it's a good hedge that those jobs would be outsourced. It's a simple demand and supply paradigm.

However, to suggest that most of this is a failure of our President's policies is disingenuous and incorrect. After 9/11, two key aspects of foreign policy changed: 1) most foreign investors invested 3 times more in Europe than they did in the US and 2) stricter visa requirements for foreign students and the boom in India and China's economy, allowed some of their smartest to seek their educational goals in other countries. The result was an unprecedented return of these graduates to their mother land.

This blame of a job drain on our work force should be attributed more the to policies of the previous administration. Because the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator, one cannot reasonably deduce that the stimulus did not stem the downward spiral of job losses in the US.

On a related note, I visited Mumbai and the Taj and I thoroughly enjoyed the sights and the people. The stench.....not so much.

[gaubladt]

01:14 PM on 10/28/2010

In 1979, I visited the Taj. in Mumbai. It has a certain old world charm.

[Kevin Atlanta]

12:40 PM on 10/28/2010

With the elections out of the way it's time to help consolidate the New World Order.

President Obama should've done the tour of the Golden Temple and donned the turban as an indication of the respect of their faith just to make the Holy Republican Cults of Jeebus Inc's heads explode in insaniTEA from the Koch Brother's Petrol-Roots movement that requires lots of TP to clean up.

I guess checking up on where American dollars are going to train new employees who take our jobs with government subsidy is a reason to visit.

Preparing the Indian Government for the US Military intrusion into Pakistan is another reason.

Hopefully he will get some positive reinforcement of tolerance and equality from the Malay people and the Indonesians. That had to be an amazing childhood experience.

[deltalady]

11:38 AM on 10/28/2010

Oh yes, India and China are our allies that are breaking the back of the American worker and the President says, "ok". I heard that the size of the Indian lobby is 2nd only to the Israeli lobby, so I guess this makes sense. I'm sure if I'm wrong, you'll all be happy to tell me. We worry so much about manufacturing job losses, we don't realize the scope of the white collar losses that are climbing every single day. The loss of jobs to outsourcing far outweighs the damage that Wall Street or the bailouts, or any of the other policies that DC has been throwing at us for years has done. That's the main issue I have with this President...as my husband says, "you've got to find the oil leak before you can fix anything." And we know where that leak is. The President can talk all day about creating jobs, but when he promotes the use of outsourcing by his inaction, he doesn't lose. The American worker does. I don't think either one of his children will ever have to worry about working with their hands or worry about a job. Their future is certain. Ours? not so much.

[rambooncemore]

12:39 PM on 10/28/2010

The loss of jobs to Indian outsourcing was... how much? The total US imports (including goods and services) from India was $20 billion, and India imported $13 billion from the US according to US trade stats. And this is somehow more significant than the trillion dollar bailouts? While I agree that a nation that does not produce anything is heading for trouble, the outsourcing bogeyman is a strawman argument for vested interests. You have much much more important issues to worry about.

[rambooncemore]

12:42 PM on 10/28/2010

At least the $20 billion imports from India are in some way helping bottomlines. What do you say about the truest American ally (Pakistan) which received $2 billion in military aid just ahead of Obama's India visit? That should suffice to keep the American worker happy? If nothing else it will mean more 26/11s in Mumbai!

[HukaShakaHukaHuka]

11:36 AM on 10/28/2010

Osama and the gang is hiding in Pakistan for the last 10 years and we are still searching for them and fighting them in Afghanistan. When will US government understand that the real enemy is the one protecting the Taliban and Al Queda in Pakistan and that the world terror infrastructure is run from Pakistan and Not Iraq nor Afghanistan?

[lightningbolt]

01:54 PM on 10/28/2010

The U.S. understands that, but it doesn't care. The objective of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is to make money for defense contractors, banks and energy companies. Fighting terrorism is just the excuse Bush needed to start the wars.

[synergie]

06:11 PM on 10/28/2010

No one wants to think that they pets they've nurtured, cossetted and tenderly fed billions and billions of dollars for decades are the very creatures they've been fighting against! So the answer would be never. It's much easier to simply tell India to stop tattling and making such a big deal about "terror" attacks, it's not like a lot of pale foreign folk are being killed or anything, just brown ones. Except that hub-bub in Mumbai, that was "real", Americans were killed and inconvenienced.

[ravi inder singh]

11:32 AM on 10/28/2010

A man called hedley , who did the ground work for the Mumbai attack .... is in American custody.... and they refuse to hand him over to India.
Its common knowledge that this individual was a cia agent as well. Why dont they want to hand hedley over to India?... because he'd spill the beans.
Welcome to India Mr. Obama. Have a great time,but keep in mind,not many people trust your country here any longer.

[lightningbolt]

01:54 PM on 10/28/2010

Common knowledge? Can you prove it?

[Rand]

10:50 AM on 10/29/2010

Proof?


He don' need no stinkin' proof!

[naschkatze]

03:45 PM on 10/28/2010

Hedley is the man in Chicago who turned state's witness, right? I didn't realize that India is trying to get him over there, but I wish you well. The CIA and the FBI domestically play duplicitous roles, entrapment for instance, and I think India should get him even if he was "inadvertently" responsible for the horrendous attack in Mumbai.

[namdlogd]

11:15 AM on 10/28/2010

POTUS looks a little freaked out in that picture, oh HP you rascals.