When leaders — and it doesn't matter the country — attend international summits like the one going on here in Lisbon, they tend to have a lot of meetings. Some are full-on “bi-lats”, short for bilateral meetings. That's a kind of one-on-one meeting between two leaders usually held at a hotel or meeting room away from the official summit meeting. They tend to be 20-25 minute meetings. The meetings are not open to the public though journalists are allowed in for a quick photo off the top of these meetings. More on that in a minute.
Today in Lisbon, before the official beginning of the NATO summit, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has four bilats: with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh; with RasIveta Radicova, Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia; with Mikheil Saakashvili, President of the Democratic Republic of Georgia; and with George Papandreou, Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic (Greece).
Leaders can also have what is known in diplomacy-speak as “pull-asides” at summits. These are shorter meetings between two leaders that can literally be off to the side of a the main meeting room and might last five or 10 minutes. Sometimes journalists get to take a snap of these meetings.
The photo opportunities — known in the trade as the photo-op — can sometimes be for journalists covering these things the only time to see a leader during a day of summitry. Some journalists see these as a bit of a waste of time but sometimes the chit-chat between the two leaders as they pose for pictures can help inform a story. For example, at La Francophonie in Montreux, Switzerland last month, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon spent a few seconds discussing Canada's failed bid to win a UN Security Council seat. In Korea last week, Harper told leaders of south Asian countries that he wanted to talk to them about human smuggling. These are the direct quotes from the PM we needed for stories we filed on those issues.
These photo-ops, though, can be mighty brief affairs. Let me show one such example: The photo-op this morning at Lisbon between Harper and Rasmussen. This is the raw video, all 54 seconds of it, from the time PMO staff let us in to the time PMO staff usher us out. This is pretty typical both for its brevity and its (lack of) content so far as Canadian PM photo ops go. They're just as brief when its a leader like the US President or leaders from China but there are about three times as many photographers.
After the photo op ends, the leader's communications staff generally issue a “read-out” in which they tell us what happened. Here's the read-out issued by Harper's communications staff about the Rasmussen-Harper meeting. It, too, is fairly typical for its length and content:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the first day of the NATO Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. The Prime Minister expressed Canada's support for the reform and transformation agenda which will ensure the Alliance becomes even more effective. The Secretary General expressed NATO's appreciation for Canada's post 2011 engagement to provide aid, development and military training after the combat mission ends next July. Prime Minister Stephen Harper noted Canada's support for NATO's Strategic Concept. On Afghanistan, the Prime Minister also noted the desire for an effective and sustainable transfer of security to Afghan authorities.
Journalists at these summits have the exciting challenge of using these series of photo-ops and readouts as the kernels around which to build the day's reporting.