Did Cambodia's first lady mock Obama with a 'greeting that's meant for servants?'

Coded slight? First Lady Rany greeted the president with a pressed-hands greeting typically used only with servants

Not welcome? Obama is the first U.S. President to visit Cambodia

Lead the way: The president had 'tense' discussions with Cambodia PM Hun Sen ahead of the gala dinner

Uneasy relationship: Obama toasts with Hun Sen at the East Asia Summit Dinner

22 November 2012
By Lydia Warren and Daily Mail Reporter

President Obama's historic first tour of Southeast Asia ended with a questionably disrespectful exchange between the president and Cambodia's first lady, Bun Rany.

Obama became the first ever U.S. president to visit Cambodia earlier this week, when he ended his four-day visit to the region by attending the annual East Asia Summit it was hosting.

Unlike the president's constructive visit to Myanmar, where he met with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and praised the country's progress, Obama had made it clear he was only in Cambodia to attend the summit.

The president went straight from the airport to a meeting with Prime Minister Hun Sen that White House officials described as tense, with Obama emphasizing his concerns over the Cambodian leader's poor democratic leadership model and the country's worsening human rights abuses.

Then later Obama and Sen changed into traditional silk shirts before settling down for dinner with the other world leaders at the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh.

Just before dinner, all appeared to be well as Sen formally introduced his wife, Cambodia's First Lady Bun Rany, to the president.

Rany greeted Obama with the traditional ‘sampeah’ greeting -- a pressed-hands gesture that shows respect for a person. Where a person's hands are placed and how deeply they bow during the gesture indicates their level of respect for the person they are greeting.

Rany placed her hands at chest level and tilted the upper half of her body slightly, leading the editorial board at Investor's Business Daily to believe that she was showing disrespect to the president.

''First lady Bun Rany greeted Obama with a traditional "sampeah" pressed-hands greeting reserved for servants, a little dig that was probably lost on him but not to Asians,' the editorial board wrote.

But Angkor tour guide Ratanak Eath says the chest-level sampeah is the traditional greeting in Cambodia between peers.

'People of equal age or rank ought to sampeah each other by placing the [pressed] hands at the chest level,' he said.

The higher the hands are placed and the deeper the bow, the more respect a greeting conveys.

A sampeah at mouth level is reserved for bosses, elders or higher-ranking people. For parents, grandparents or teachers, a sampeah is typically raised to nose level and when saluting the king or monks, the sampeah is raised to eyebrow level.

The highest level for a sampeah is the forehead, which is reserved for God or sacred statues.

According to Investor's Business Daily and a few bloggers, however, Rany's sampeah was only fit for a servant.

Was the first lady getting her own back over the president's harsh words earlier to her husband or did she simply forget that she was shaking hands with the leader of the free world?

During the visit, Obama said the trip should not be seen as an endorsement of Hun Sen and the government he has led since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was in power in the White House.

'He highlighted a set of issues that he's concerned about within Cambodia,' Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to the president, told Reuters.

'In particular, I would say the need for them to move toward elections that are fair and free, the need for an independent election commission associated with those elections, the need to allow for the release of political prisoners and for opposition parties to be able to operate.'

Rhodes, who agreed the talks could 'tense', said Obama had focused all of his comments on human rights and had told Hun Sen that Cambodia has 'much further to go on that set of issues'.

But Hun Sen responded that concerns over human rights were exaggerated and Cambodia had a better record than many countries, U.S. and Cambodian officials said.

There was also a stark difference between the president's welcome in Cambodia and Myanmar, where tens of thousands of people had lined city streets with American flags to cheer his motorcade.

In Phnom Penh, Air Force One landed to a setting sun and only small clusters of Cambodians.

The president's motorcade then drove to the East Asia Summit at the Diamond Island Convention Center, where President Obama met with world leaders including Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah and China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

The visit was the last stop on his four-day trip to Southeast Asia that began in Bangkok.

Many Cambodians also credit their leader with helping the country emerge from the horrors of the 1970s Khmer Rouge reign, when systematic genocide left 1.7 million dead.

During their talks, Obama also addressed holding fair elections next year after Hun Sen's critics say they are heavily skewed in favor of his ruling party, a spokesman said.

Hun Sen also reiterated a request to forgive most of the country's debt of more than $370 million to the United States.

Last year, Cambodia offered to repay 30 per cent of the debt, which they said was a compromise as the money was used by a pro-American government in the 1970s to repress its own people.