Obama inauguration scenes from around the world
Inauguration scenes around the world: Message in snow, good wishes in Iraq, a happy school
Staff
AP News
Jan 20, 2009 13:21 EST
It was just a scribble in the snow.
But the giant "YES, WE CAN!" that Norbert Aschenbrenner carved in huge block letters at the U.N. complex in Vienna on Tuesday was a poignant expression of how many people in the international community are embracing Barack Obama.
Aschenbrenner works for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which went up against President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration said Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction; the IAEA insisted its inspectors had found no evidence of any.
Aschenbrenner said he felt compelled to do something to express his pleasure with the change of leadership in Washington. "So I came in early today, at 7 a.m., and felt a bit like a graffiti sprayer," he said.
U.N. workers peered down at the giant slogan from their office windows and snapped photos with their cell phones.
By midafternoon, it had mostly melted away.
"We trust this is not a metaphor for how quickly the vision of Obama will be dissipated!" said Neil Jarvis, an IAEA official from South Africa. "May it rather last for a long, long time."
_By William J. Kole.
___
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Hussein Mohammed Ali, a teacher in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, took special pride in watching Barack Obama take office as president of the United States. "He's a black man like me," the jubilant Ali said.
Ali is among about 350,000 Iraqis with African ancestry — descendants of slaves brought to Iraq when it was part of the Ottoman Empire. Many of them live in the Basra area, where they feel marginalized in Iraqi society.
"I feel so proud and happy today because Obama, a black man like me, will assume the post of president of the world's most powerful country," Ali said. "The great event taking place today represents compensation for all the years of deprivation and denial that black people lived through."
Like many Iraqis, the 28-year-old is looking to the Obama administration to bring changes to U.S. policy in Iraq, where nearly six years of conflict have left society traumatized and anxious for peace.
"Obama will bring positive changes to Iraq by changing American policy toward our country," Ali said.
_By Robert H. Reid.
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