UNITED NATIONS — President Barack Obama challenged the Arab world to use its newfound embrace of democracy to ensure protection for freedom of religion and speech and even life, using the last address of his first term to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday to call for a renewed focus on the “painstaking work of reform.”
Obama took on a number of issues at play between America and the Muslim world, vowing that the “United States will do what we must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” and warning that time to diplomatically resolve the Iranian nuclear issue “is not unlimited.”
“Make no mistake: A nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained,” Obama said. He refused to go further than what he has said in the past, despite pleas from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to establish a new “red line.”
“America wants to resolve this issue through diplomacy, and we believe there is still time and space to do so,” Obama said. “We respect the right of nations to ac- cess peaceful nuclear power, but one of the purposes of the United Nations is to see that we harness that power for peace.”
Also Tuesday, Obama and his rival, Mitt Romney, appeared within hours of each other at a global charitable gathering hosted in New York by former President Bill Clinton, each candidate choosing to focus on how the United States can better promote prosperity and human rights abroad and at home.
Romney, addressing the Clinton Global Initiative, called for an overhaul of the country’s foreign-assistance programs that he said would stimulate economic growth across the developing world.
Hours after delivering his annual address to the General Assembly, Obama spoke before the Clinton group, outlining additional steps the United States would take to combat human trafficking, which he told the lunchtime audience “must be called by its true name: modern slavery.”
The presidential nominees never crossed paths, and partisanship was largely out of view during the back-to-back appearances before thousands of the Clinton group’s members.
Just two weeks after the beginning of violent anti-American protests that led to the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, Obama vowed at the U.N. that even as the United States works to bring the killers to justice, he will not back down from his support of democratic freedoms in the Muslim world. But he also gave a spirited defense of U.S. freedom of speech and the spirit of tolerance that allowed the inflammatory anti-Muslim video that prompted the protests.
“As president of our country and commander in chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day,” Obama said. “And I will defend their right to do so.” For that, he received cheers in the cavernous hall.
While condemning the “crude and disgusting” video that prompted the protests in Libya and throughout the Muslim world, the president worked to explain why the United States values so highly its First Amendment.
Americans, he said, “have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their view.”
“There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents,” Obama said. “There is no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There is no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon or destroy a school in Tunis or cause death and destruction in Pakistan.”
In Romney’s address to the Clinton Global Initiative, the Republican candidate said the U.S. seems “at the mercy of events, rather than shaping events.”
Romney on Tuesday largely muted his sharp criticism of Obama’s foreign policies, specifically of the president’s response to the violent anti-American protests.
He got in one jab, saying, “I will never apologize for America.” Romney has frequently claimed that Obama has offered apologies to foreign governments, but independent fact-checkers have disputed that contention.
Romney announced his proposal for a “prosperity pact,” which he said would link trade policy with development policy to promote investment and entrepreneurship in developing nations.
“Nothing we can do as a nation will change lives and nations more effectively and permanently than sharing the insight that lies at the foundation of America’s own economy, and that is that free people pursuing happiness in their own ways build a strong and prosperous nation,” Romney said.
Under his plan, the government’s foreign aid would be more closely linked to trade policies as well as private investment and corporate partnerships. He said this could “empower individuals, encourage innovators and reward entrepreneurs.”
Later, Obama spoke against human trafficking, noting that some girls sold off by poor families are no older than his two daughters. He said his administration is helping other countries meet international goals designed to reduce trafficking and to call out those not working hard enough on the matter.
“Nations must speak with one voice — that our people and our children are not for sale,” Obama said.
Obama said he signed an executive order to better ensure that U.S. tax dollars never go to companies or groups that conduct human trafficking. He asked companies to be vigilant because trafficking is never “a business model.”
The gathering was nonpartisan, but Romney did make one reference to the state of the presidential campaign.
After Clinton walked offstage, Romney suggested that the former president was responsible for Obama’s polling lead.
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this election season, by the way, it’s that a few words from Bill Clinton can do a man a lot of good,” Romney said, drawing laughter from the audience. “All I’ve got to do now is wait a couple of days for that bounce.”
Obama fondly recalled Clinton’s speech at the Democratic convention and said that someone suggested on Twitter that Obama should make Clinton “secretary of explaining things — although they didn’t use the word ‘things,’” Obama said. The crowd slowly got the joke about the word Obama edited out.
Romney, after his appearance at the Clinton gathering, took questions at an education forum sponsored at the New York Public Library by NBC News and various foundations. Asked about this month’s Chicago teachers strike, Romney said he wouldn’t like to see such actions blocked, calling them “a right that exists in this country.”
The former Massachusetts governor also said teacher compensation should be linked to student performance and preparedness. He reiterated his support for an expansion of school choice and for requiring states to give disadvantaged students access to any school, public or private.
On whether every child in America deserves the kind of private education Romney enjoyed in suburban Detroit, he said that isn’t possible and wouldn’t guarantee results.
“There are teachers in the public system that are every bit as good as those that are in the private system,” he said. “I reject the idea that everybody has to have a, if you will, Harvard-expense level degree to be successful.”
Romney later Tuesday returned to Ohio to kick off a bus tour across the critical battleground state.
With polls showing Obama enjoying a clear advantage in Ohio, Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, began two days of retail campaigning with a joint rally at Dayton International Airport.
Standing in front of their campaign planes and joined by Tea Party star Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the Republican ticket painted a dramatic contrast with the Obama administration — on their tax plans, on trade policies with China and on the size and role of government.
Romney told several hundred supporters who stood on the tarmac under gray clouds that Obama’s vision for the country is “entirely foreign to anything this nation has ever known.”
Top Romney aides predicted that the campaign’s operation on the ground in Ohio to turn out supporters could be decisive in the state.
“The ground game is good for a field goal. If you’re within three points, it can make a difference,” Rich Beeson, the campaign’s national political director, told reporters aboard Romney’s plane en route to Vandalia, Ohio.
Beeson said that with six weeks left until Election Day, the Obama campaign is too bullish.
“They’re sort of spiking the ball at the 30-yard line right now,” Beeson said.
Vice President Joe Biden, meanwhile, made a raw appeal to Virginia’s middle class Tuesday, blasting the Republican presidential ticket for pushing what he says is a blueprint for boosting middle-income taxes while giving trillions in tax breaks to the rich.
Biden said Romney and Ryan represent a radical and obstructionist brand of conservatism that would sacrifice education and Medicare to help the wealthy.
“Look, folks, this is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said.
Information for this article was contributed by Helene Cooper of The New York Times; by Hans Nichols, Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, Flavia Krause-Jackson, John McCormick, Margaret Talev and Greg Giroux of Bloomberg News; by Philip Rucker and Felicia Sonmez of The Washington Post and by Ben Feller, Ken Thomas, Matthew Daly and Bob Lewis of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/26/2012