Video: Obama addresses international tensions at press conference

>>> standing by. i want to talk about north korea . as well as the big story of the day, china. the blind activist who may have sought refuge at the united states . regarding the anniversary of the death of osama bin laden and critics coming in on this web ad .

>> reporter: i would say there are two note worthy ways the president responded. number one, he really took issue with the way the question was worded when he said this is not excessive celebration. but then at the same time he was making the case that it is appropriate to mark the anniversary and to talk about it in a positive way. the second thing i thought was interesting, he wanted to remind people. frankly a statement he made during the campaign in 2008 when he talked about, he would be willing to go it alone in pakistan if necessary. and by going it alone, that was criticized at the time. it was this question about violating the sovereignty of pakistan . a supposed ally. sometimes ally. however you want to describe them on any given day. that of course he did get at love criticism from secretary clinton who was a candidate at the time but also from republicans running. and it is clearly, he wasn't focused on the democratic point but that is where he was going with this. he wanted to say, hey, i said i would do this. i made it clear and i took a lot of heat on it at the time.

>> let me quickly play what the president said when he was asked. we don't have that yet. let me move on to the questions regarding the blind activist. the president not going on the record clearly because of the tensions, and the diplomatic tensions involving this map.

>> by saying i have seen and i'm aware of the press reports, that sort of, that's like step one in confirming. they're not confirming it but they're not pushing back on the idea that this is happening or may have happened. in talking to a press aide off cam remark does the united states even have a specific policy in how it's handling dissidents that, in china, when they are looking for u.s. protection. and they said there is no one policy. and that you, this is a case and again without trying to confirm what was going on, this was a case where it is a fine line you walk. the united states wants to be careful, not looking like they're meddling in internal affairs but they want to make sure we know they bring up this issue, particularly with this gentleman. the blind dissident in china. that his treatment of his family has been brought up previously so they bring that up. we're at step one of confirmation on this. they're not confirming it but about press reports is step one.

>> we heard the president then, the administration's concerns with human rights as well in china. i believe it was our own andrea mitchell who said this is the most tension we've seen since tiananmen square .

>> reporter: one of the thing this administration set up, every six months, there was a high level meeting of at least secretary clinton and secretary geithner with the equivalent, there appears in every six months, either in beijing or here in the united states . that's about to take place in china this week. now here you have all this tension. it is mostly about economic issues. of course, this is now going to be front and center. and it ads to the tension of the moment, clearly.

>> the third topic, in north korea , the president saying the country will continue to isolate itself if it makes these moves and threats.

>> there has been these rumors that they're about to do a larger test of their nuclear power because of the embarrassment of the missile launch that was not meant to be. one thing that struck me by the way. and japan has been going through their own domestic political turmoil over the last couple of years. this japanese prime minister clearly a more low key prime minister than we've seen. a man of few words. i was struck by how short and to the point his answers were. never elaborating. a different style of leadership than we've seen in japan for a while of norfolk who follow japanese politics , i'm sure that was of interest to them.

>> a lot of them were tweet in with great interest. let me respond about the anniversary of bin laden 's death. let me play the ad.

>> i just recommend that people take a look at people's previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into pakistan and take out bin laden . i assume that people meant what they said when they said it. that's been at least my practice. i said that i would go after bin laden if we had a clear shot at him. and i did.

>> there you have it. earlier we played mitt romney was campaigning, he was out. a reporter asked him. he said kind of flip antly, even jimmy carter would have done that.

>> i think you'll see this anniversary noted throughout the week. and to watch where the republicans are trying to do this, trying to minimize this. it is understandable. it is a strength. the fact is thek and how do you speck them to be? primaries are very personal in nature and i think president clinton had some issues during the campaign. it took a while. they're seeing that there is more of a comfort level between the two of them than they had seen before. the fund-raisers, they didn't put them on camera. the clinton folks wouldn't have minded if it was on camera. they release ad transcript of the remarks. i wouldn't be surprised if this comfort level you're seeing between the two of them publicly is now there and you will see the obama campaign turn on the cameras and say, okay, let's do this on camera.

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