Mr Obama stressed his Muslim roots in a way that he never did during his presidential campaign last year, when it might have been seen as a political liability. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON - US PRESIDENT Barack Obama had a blunt, 'tough-love' message for Arabs and Israelis that thrust him deeper into Middle East peacemaking - a tangled web that bedeviled his predecessors and carries risks for him.
Quoting a Koran passage to 'speak always the truth,' President Obama set aside diplomatic niceties in demanding Israel stop building Jewish West Bank settlements that antagonize Palestinians, for Palestinians to work for peace and accept Israel's right to exist and for Palestinian militants to halt violence.
While direct and frank, President Obama struck an empathetic tone with Muslims in seeking what he called a 'new beginning' with them, trying to move beyond tensions left by the Bush administration's war in Iraq.
A former US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk of the Saban Centre for Middle East policy, said President Obama presented 'a dramatic and persuasive American manifesto for a new relationship with the Muslim world.'
'We cannot impose peace,' President Obama said on Thursday in a speech in Cairo to the world's Muslims. 'But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognise the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.'
His foray into the Middle East comes far earlier in his presidency than that of his predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who waited until late in their terms to make a major push and found themselves disappointed at the outcome.
Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said taking the initiative on Middle East peace this early means President Obama's ability to deliver will become a test of his credibility.
'This administration three years from now when we're in the middle of an election campaign will in part be measured on the extent to which it brings Arabs and Israelis closer to a two-state solution,' he said.
The president, who is a Christian but whose Kenyan father came from a family that includes generations of Muslims, stressed his Muslim roots in a way that he never did during his presidential campaign last year, when it might have been seen as a political liability.
That may have helped him in delivering a speech which Democratic Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called a blunt, honest address that was critical to signalling 'a new era of understanding with Muslim communities worldwide.'
'He said things that if previous presidents had said them, it wouldn't have mattered, but because he is who he is, it changed the climate in which he said them, made it more meaningful,' said Ron Kaufman, who was political adviser to former President George H.W. Bush.
'The fact that a Barack Hussein Obama said these things, he can say them in a way that the moderate Muslims would listen,' Kaufman said. - REUTERS.
