Some ministers wait in an anteroom of Silvio Berlusconi's villa for a chance to see the boss.
Final agreement on the bailout, however, was delayed as finance ministers waited to see if a related restructuring of Greek debts to private investors succeeded and if Athens fulfilled all the conditions it had agreed to.
Ministers wait hours for an audience with Vladimir Putin, CEOs sit nervously for months hoping for a summons to see him, and even Donald Trump was stood up during a 2013 visit to Moscow and told Putin was too busy to see him.
The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has kept the prime minister waiting about whether he intends to support the campaign to keep Britain in a reformed EU.
She sews lichens into the veil, and at the ceremony her groom pulls her along a rope to a minister waiting at the "altar".
Tuesday's much-publicized meeting in the Oval Office was in stark contrast to the frosty reception Mr. Netanyahu received during his last trip to the White House in March, when Mr. Obama left the prime minister waiting in the Roosevelt Room while he went upstairs to have dinner with his wife and daughters.
Certainly he will be an even weaker prime minister, waiting for Winograd's final report in the summer, which will be yet more devastating because it will deal with the rest of the war, during which Olmert's failings were more obvious.
As Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister, waits for regional elections in Galicia and the Basque country on October 21st, Spain is inching towards asking for a "soft" bail-out.
Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, waited until he was out of office before announcing his conversion from the protestant Church of England to Catholicism.
But the prime minister waited to intercede at Mustansiriya University until Oct. 14, the day after he was met at his office by the bloodied Professor Bayati.
