SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I'm not aware of the comment that you attribute to President Morales. I can try to get smart on that. I can tell you that I think it's President Obama's view that we do not engage in activities of the sort that are alleged in what you just read to me. But I'll try to get -- I'll take a look at what the assertion is.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Just based on the meeting that he had with UNASUR when this was raised, the President made clear exactly what the other senior administration official just said directly to President Morales.

Q I'm sorry, could you say that again -- I didn't quite catch it.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: That in yesterday's UNASUR meeting when this issue was raised in broad terms, the President made clear his administration's policy of not supporting any such activity -- even without knowing the details.

Q Can you talk a little bit about any conversations between the President and Nicaragua's leader at this past meeting?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The meeting -- because the rotating chairmanship of SICA is held by Nicaragua today, President Ortega was the lead-off speaker on behalf the Central Americans and presented kind of the consensus view from the leaders in Central America of the issues that are important to them. And his comments were largely confined to that consensus view. He spoke briefly at the top, and other than exchanging pleasantries at the beginning of the meeting and perhaps at the end, I don’t think there was any in-depth exchange directly between the President and President Ortega.

Q Did he reiterate any of the same criticisms of U.S. policy that he did Friday night?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: As I said, he spoke to the consensus views in Central America on the issues of central importance to them, being the issues that I talked about earlier, as the ones that the meeting was focused upon.

Q You said he spoke briefly? (Laughter.)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Quite briefly.

Q I had one other question, I guess for any of you gentlemen, big picture. Can you talk about how many of the leaders -- if you don’t have a specific number, at least an idea -- how many of the leaders that President Obama has actually got to meet and maybe chat with? And how would you characterize their reaction to President Obama in meeting him for the first time?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: You know, I couldn't put an exact number on it, Ben. I can say that the President has gone out of his way to introduce himself to a lot of the members -- a lot of the Presidents, heads of state here. I mean, you saw that in action the other night. But in terms of an exact number, I'm not able to do it.

I can tell you that the general atmosphere in the meetings, in the working sessions and in the -- working sessions of the entire summit and the side meetings and multilateral meetings, and then in the conversations the President has had, the pull-asides and so forth -- generally have been remarkable for both their candor and their collaborative demeanor and collaborative outlook.

So I'll leave it to you to determine how that compares to past summits. They have all indicated that this strikes them as a new tone.

Q So there's a lot to be said for the exchanging of pleasantries?