Medvedev urges Gadhafi to go...and other news from the G8

From CNN website, May 27, 2011
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has joined American and other European leaders in calling for Moammar Gadhafi to step down from power, a shift that appears to indicate a closing diplomatic window for the longtime Libyan strongman.

Moscow has been a strong critic of the NATO-led mission in Libya, arguing that the scope of the organization's air campaign against Gadhafi's forces far exceeds the civilian protection mandate approved by the U.N. Security Council.
Medvedev's call for Gadhafi to step aside came at the end of the Group of Eight summit in Deauville, France, on Friday. The G8 includes the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy and Russia.
As a sign that the window of political survival is relentlessly closing, Russia may have inflicted a more serious blow to the fortunes of the Libyan dictator than all the bombs from NATO. And there is no collateral damage to this bomb.
Merely a few syllables in front of a microphone from a Russian President.
Link this statement to the joint statement of Obama and Medvedev that Russia and the U.S. will work out a missile system that "works" for both countries and that Medvedev will visit the U.S. in June and you can see a growing halo around the head of the U.S. president glowing from his efforts in Europe in the last several days.
Barring the glitch of the band starting too soon with "God Save the Queen" while the President was finishing his toast to her majesty, the visit, complete with a ping-pong match with David Cameron, a photo-op with Prince and Princess of Cambridge, an address in Westminster Hall to the British Parliamentarians, and then off to France and the G8 stage where financial support for Tunisia and Egypt was estimated at some $40 billion (provided all participants ante up!) was a smashing success, especially when you consider that Republican pundit, Pat Buchanan, gives Obama an A for his performance on the PBS program The McLaughlin Group.
And then there was Stephen Harper, holding fast to the Netanyahu line that the 67 boundaries are unacceptable, when, in fact, "with mutually agreed swaps" was the far more significant phrase in the Obama speech at the State Department.
It is so easy to find the microbial and micro-mind of Harper speaking "in italics" on the world stage, without having more impact than a gnat flitting on the surface of a Muskoka Lake.