{{U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will meet on Saturday with relatives of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela, but they will not visit the hospital where the former South African president is critically ill, the White House said.}}<\/p>\n
Obama is in South Africa on the second stop of a three-nation Africa tour. His visit had triggered intense speculation that the United States’ first African-American president might visit 94-year-old Mandela in the Pretoria hospital where he has spent three weeks being treated for a lung infection.<\/p>\n
“Out of deference to Nelson Mandela’s peace and comfort and the family’s wishes, they will not be visiting the hospital,” the White House said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Obamas would meet privately with members of the Mandela family “to offer their thoughts and prayers at this difficult time,” the statement added.<\/p>\n
Since starting his Africa tour in Senegal on Thursday, Obama has paid fulsome tribute to the man globally admired as a symbol of struggle against injustice and of racial reconciliation for the way he led South Africa out of centuries of white-minority rule.<\/p>\n
The U.S. president has called Mandela a “personal hero” and is due to make a tour on Sunday of Robben Island, the former penal colony where South Africa’s first black president passed 18 of the 27 years he spent in apartheid jails.<\/p>\n
Obama held bilateral talks on Saturday in Pretoria with South African President Jacob Zuma.<\/p>\n
{Agencies}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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