Obama in Mideast to reach out to Muslims

Major speech today in Egypt

Posted: Thursday, June 04, 2009

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Opening a mission to write a new chapter on Islam and the West, President Obama consulted Wednesday with the Saudi king "in the place where Islam began," prelude to a high-stakes speech in Egypt meant to ease long-held Muslim grievances against the United States.

Gerald Herbert/Ap
Gerald Herbert/Ap


In advance, Saudi King Abdullah staged a lavish welcome after Obama's all-night flight to Riyadh.

"I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty's counsel," Obama said. The president and the king talked in the splendor of Abdullah's sprawling retreat, a lush patch of searing desert.


As such, Obama's goals of opening what speechwriter Ben Rhodes called "a new chapter between the United States and the Muslim world" could hardly proceed without Saudi support. Obama also came asking for specific requests of help from Abdullah on a range of related issues, such as peace between the long-feuding Israelis and Palestinians, Iran's suspected efforts to build a nuclear bomb, rising Taliban extremism in Pakistan and a destination for some 100 Yemeni detainees now in the U.S. at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp.

Denis McDonough, a deputy national security adviser to Obama, could not immediately say whether the president's requests were successful after meetings between the two leaders and their delegations that stretched over nearly four hours.


Obama had pledged during his presidential campaign to deliver a major address from an Islamic capital within 100 days of becoming president. He did so with a speech to the parliament in Turkey, a secular but overwhelmingly Muslim nation. The White House says his speech in Cairo, a center of Islamic thought and culture, is the one he had in mind in making that promise, and set high expectations for it.

In his speech, Obama does not intend to make new policy - but to frame it differently. By stressing both U.S. respect for Muslims and the need for all sides, including Washington, to make changes, the president hopes to start setting relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world down a more constructive path even while some disagreements persist.

Bin Laden reacts to Obama's trip

CAIRO - Osama bin Laden threatened Americans in a new audio recording aired Wednesday, saying President Obama inflamed hatred toward the U.S. by ordering Pakistan to crack down on militants in Swat Valley and block Islamic law there.

Bin Laden claimed U.S. pressure led to a campaign of "killing, fighting, bombing and destruction" that prompted the exodus of a million Muslims from Swat in northwest Pakistan.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, in Saudi Arabia with Obama, said al-Qaida obviously is seeking to shift attention away from what he called the president's historic efforts to have an open dialogue with the Muslim world.

- Associated Press


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