Q Steve, can I ask a couple scheduling things? You mentioned food security is going to be a topic. I wonder if the current economic situation is in any way also factoring into the schedule, whether or not the markets is something that may or may not come up in his meetings. And you also mentioned the political dissidents that he's going to have lunch with -- do you know who that is?

MR. HADLEY: We have made some invites. I'm not sure we have a list. We'll take it and see if we can get a list out for folks -- folks will probably -- if we don't have it, we probably will in the next day or so. MR. JOHNDROE: Yes, I think we'll release it on either Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, but we will release a list. MR. HADLEY: Obviously the agenda for these U.N. General Assemblies gets sort of solidified usually weeks in advance, though they sort of -- it gets -- and so I don't anticipate therein the -- within the U.N. General Assembly meeting any sort of formal events addressing the financial crisis. Obviously it is something that as he goes about meetings, heads of government are going to come up and they're going to ask him about it.

In that respect, the speech he's given today I think will be very useful and reassuring, because it gives a framework for our policy going forward and probably will answer a lot of the questions that he otherwise would have gotten from the heads of state and government. And I think with that announced, he's in a position to be pretty reassuring that we understand the challenge we face, that we are moving aggressively to deal with that challenge, and that's going to be good news to all these countries because we are such an important player in the global economy.

seen at 09:00, 20 September in Whitehouse Press Briefings. Email this to a friend.
Next item; Original source; Previous item;