just thinking logistically, I imagine that happened a lot. Anyway I expect a decent number of his calls were made by aides and he just took the phone after they got through to the right person.
Im surprised the aides from each side didnt do all the logistics of connecting with one another and the president wasnt just handed a phone with the call already connected through.
That was the aides from Obama's side calling 100%. The minister was newly elected, maybe fairly new to politics as a whole? Maybe he just doesn't like middlemen. Edit: **Re-**elected, I missed that. I guess the second option then.
Its a news site but the only place you can find the date of the article is in the URL. Sometimes I am baffled by the weird design decisions people are making.