?Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er who meets US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma to­day will in­vite Oba­ma to at­tend the World Cup Foot­ball 2010 se­ries in South Africa.

Warn­er con­firmed this yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view as he left New Jer­sey to head for Wash­ing­ton and to­day's meet­ing with Oba­ma. This takes place at 2 pm at Oba­ma's Oval of­fice, Warn­er said. Warn­er said Oba­ma had in­di­cat­ed he (Warn­er) would be giv­en a tour of the White House be­fore the meet­ing. Warn­er will be ac­com­pa­nied by Fi­fa head Sepp Blatt­ter. "We will be dis­cussing var­i­ous foot­ball mat­ters in­clud­ing ex­tend­ing an in­vi­ta­tion to Mr Oba­ma to at­tend the World Cup se­ries in South Africa next year," Warn­er added.

Sev­er­al months ago, Warn­er said, Oba­ma had writ­ten Fi­fa seek­ing to have the 2018 World Cup foot­ball se­ries held in the US. Aus­tralia, Rus­sia, the UK and Japan are among coun­tries vy­ing to host the 2018 se­ries. Warn­er said he sup­port­ed Oba­ma's "pas­sion­ate" (sic) bid to have the 2018 se­ries in the US. Warn­er said that dur­ing to­day's meet­ing, he al­so in­tend­ed to raise with Oba­ma sev­er­al is­sues of na­tion­al in­ter­est–re­gard­ing T&T. He did not spec­i­fy the is­sues.

Warn­er had at­tend­ed Oba­ma's in­au­gu­ra­tion in Wash­ing­ton in Jan­u­ary on in­vi­ta­tion of the Pres­i­den­tial In­au­gu­ra­tion Com­mit­tee. He was al­so in­vit­ed to the South­ern Ball, one of sev­er­al held on in­au­gu­ra­tion night. Warn­er, who had pre­vi­ous­ly brought Oba­ma sup­port­er Rev Al Sharp­ton to T&T, sub­se­quent­ly host­ed a vis­it to T&T by De­moc­rats strate­gist Don­na Brazile. Warn­er al­so met with Oba­ma aide, Lar­ry Grisolano of AKPD Mes­sage and Me­dia firm in May. At that meet­ing were COP mem­bers Gan­ga Singh and Roy Au­gus­tus.