KAYE: Worldwide protests have forced the Nigerian president to step up efforts to find those kidnapped girls. This crowd here in London is trying to rally international support. More than 200 students are still being held by an Islamist militant group Boko Haram which is violently opposed to educating women. In fact its very name translates at Western education is a sin. Here's CNN's Isha Sesay.</s>ISHA SESAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Amid mounting criticism, Nigeria's president Goodluck Jonathan for the first time spoke on camera about the abduction of more 200 school girls nearly three weeks ago. While admitting they still don't know where the abducted girls are, the president still expressed confidence in his government's efforts to find them.</s>PRES. GOODLUCK JONATHAN, NIGERIA: We'll surely get them out. One good thing that made us happy I believe is that there's no story that any of them have been touched, in terms of injured or dead. I really sympathize and express my empathy to the parents and the relatives and, of course, the guardians of these girls. We are fathers and mothers. The daughter of school is -- to write the secondary school terminal exams. So they're</s>SESAY: The government has provided few details about the search and rescue mission. Apart from confirming that helicopters and aircraft are being used to scan the area, the president didn't provide much in the way of significant operational detail on Sunday. There is no doubt that the president was looking to blunt mounting criticism of his government's handling of this situation with his remarks but his comments suggesting that lack of progress in finding the girls is partly due to a lack of cooperation from the girls' family is unlikely to go over well here with some here in Nigeria. Isha Sesay, CNN, Lagos.</s>KAYE: We all hear about out-of-touch politicians, but once a year at the White House Correspondents' Dinner they hear what a lot of people really think about them, whether they like it or not. So would Washington work better if they heard it more often?
Nigeria Urged to Find School Girls