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Obama's Muslim address: 'Mutual respect'
by Mark Silva
With a long-promised address to the Muslim world next week, the White House says, President Barack Obama plans to underscore the "mutual interests and mutual respect'' that the United States and Muslim communities around the world have.
Obama will stand before an audience Thursday at Cairo University, at an event cohosted by Al-Azhar University for his televised address, and also visit a mosque while he is in Cairo.
"President Obama's speech will be an important part of his engagement with the Muslim world, which began in his inaugural and has continued through venues such as his interview with Al Arabiya, his Nowruz message, and his speech and town hall in Turkey,' Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said during a briefing with reporters last night.
"The speech will outline his personal commitment to engagement, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect,'' Gibbs said. "He will discuss how the United States and Muslim communities around the world can bridge some of the differences that have divided them. He will review particular issues of concern, such as violent extremism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And he will discuss new areas for partnership going forward that serve the mutual interests of our people.''
The president's journey will start Wednesday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with a private meeting with King Abdullah.
"That obviously is also part of our outreach to the Muslim world,'' said Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, "but also an opportunity while he's in this vitally important region to discuss a range of important concerns from energy to Middle East peace to the fight against extremism.''
(Pictured above: Students on the campus of Cairo University, where President Barack Obama plans to address Muslim world. .Photo by Amr Nabil / )
While the United States and Egypt have had their differences, particularly on the question of political freedom in Egypt, the U.S. also counts on Cairo as an ally in the pursuit of Middle East peace.
"It's important to underscore that Egypt is a long-time strategic ally of the United States,'' McDonough said. "It's a key country in the Arab and Muslim world. It is a young -- like much of the Muslim world, itself is a young country with a burgeoning younger population that the president looked very much forward to engaging directly in this speech and in the meetings while he's there.''
Obama will head from Egypt to Germany, for a visit to the concentration camp, Buchenwald, to "underscore the terrible tragedy, the undeniable tragedy of the Holocaust,'' McDonough says. And he will end in France, commemorating the 65th anniversary of the landing at Normandy.
But the focal point of the trip is Cairo.
"Obviously the choice of the location... (is) underscoring the storied history and learnedness of Islam,'' McDonough says.
"The message the president wants to send is not different, frankly, than the one he's been sending since he was inaugurated, namely that we believe that this is an opportunity for us in the United States, who, frankly, have arrived at a place here based on many of the advances that come out of the Muslim world, be it science out of Baghdad, be it math and technology out of Al-Andalus or otherwise,'' he says "The fact is that we've had a great partnership over the course of many decades.
"We want to get back on a shared partnership, back in a conversation that focuses on the shared values, and that's what the president will talk about in Cairo.''
Asked about any meetings with dissidents while the president is in Eqypt, the White House says it has 'reached out'' to a "full range'' of political interests as it assembles an audience for the president's address at Cairo University, and Obama will seek time with the Egyptian press while he is there.
"With Mubarak, some of the traditional issues about the Middle East will be -- obviously will be front and center, and I think that the president, as he always does with leaders around the world, will not hesitate to bring up some of the important civil society issues, democracy issues, that he has brought up with the Chinese and others,'' said Mark Lippert, chief of staff for the National Security Council.
"What you can expect is a speech that really addresses the range of issues and interests and concerns that we have across this broad swath of the globe that is the Muslim world,'' McDonough says. "The fact is, that the president himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to -- or before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world -- you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans a key part of Illinois and Chicago.
"And so it's going to address a range of issues... freedom and opportunity, prosperity.''
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