President-elect Barack Obama has made his first White House appointment - picking Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and will meet with President George W Bush to discuss the transition phase on Monday, dpa said. Emanuel, a close friend of Obama's who served as a senior advisor in former president Bill Clinton's White House in the 1990s, accepted the job on Thursday, a Democratic Party aide confirmed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. Facing the first wartime handover of power since Vietnam in 1968, Bush met with his cabinet Thursday morning to consider his final priorities and said he would ensure a speedy and orderly transition over the next months. Obama received his first major intelligence briefing Thursday, and Bush said his staff would immediately begin briefing Obama's advisors on policy decisions and the workings of the various federal departments.
