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United States President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao may attend the Commonwealth Heads Of Goverment Meeting in Trinidad and Tobago. They might be joined by other non-Commonwealth leaders including Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapetero, and President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. This became a possibility after Obama and Hu were unable to hammer out a firm agreement on climate change during the visit of Preseident Obama to China recently.

Climate change is the catalyst and motivating factor for the surprise attendance, according to United Nations sources outside of Trinidad and Tobago. Thus far, non-Commonwealth leaders such as Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, along with United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is on an urgent mission to secure a climate change agreement, have confirmed that they will be in Port of Spain during the meeting next week in Trinidad.

Rasmussen and Moon are the co-hosts of the climate change conference to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, and their attendance at the CHOGM is raising the possibility that other high profile leaders including Obama and Hu may attend. This has been confirmed by Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, Patrick Manning.

Since China and the United States to hammer out an agreement during the recent visit of President Obama to China, along with the recent activity, including a scheduled meeting between Sarkozy and Amazonian countries to deal with the climate change issue, the possibility has increased that both Obama and Hu will attend the CHOGM in Trinidad and Tobago.

However, with all the speculation, both the United States and China embassies have not confirmed any of the above statements. Chen Yang, Political Affairs attache at the Chinese Embassy in Port of Spain stated that the Embassy was ‘still awaiting a response’ from China. United  States Embassy public affairs officer, Matthew V Cassetta said he had received no official communication that either Obama or United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be coming to Trinidad for the CHOGM.