Date:26/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/26/stories/2008092662301600.htm

International

You’re gorgeous, Zardari tells Palin

New York: “Gorgeous,” this is how Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari described Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin when she met him here.

“You look so gorgeous. Now, I know why the whole of America is crazy about you,” said Mr. Zardari, while receiving Ms. Palin, also the Governor of Alaska, here.

“You are so nice,” Ms. Palin(44), a former Miss Wasilla runner up in Alaska beauty pageant, told Mr. Zardari, husband of the assassinated former Pakistani Premier, Benazir Bhutto.

An aide of Mr. Zardari then told the two to keep shaking hands for the cameras. “I’m supposed to pose again,” said Ms. Palin. “If he’s [aide] insisting, I might hug,” Mr. Zardari replied, for which Ms. Palin smiled politely in response. The conversation was captured on a camera and telecast later. — PTI