Obama Seeks 'New Beginning' for US, Muslims

Calls for end to 'cycle of suspicion and discord'
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 4, 2009 6:06 AM CDT
Obama Seeks 'New Beginning' for US, Muslims
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Thursday, June 4, 2009.   (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Speaking in Cairo, President Obama called for a “new beginning” for the US and the Muslim world, the BBC reports. The “cycle of suspicion and discord must end,” he said at Cairo University, urging a “sustained effort...to respect one another and seek common ground.” Acknowledging that “no single speech can eradicate years of mistrust,” he said “we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts.”

Obama called the US bond with Israel “unbreakable,” but noted that the “situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.” Pointing to the Iraq war, he said “no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.” He said the US wasn’t looking to establish permanent bases in Iraq or Afghanistan. “Just as Muslims do not fit a crude stereotype, America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire.”
(More President Obama stories.)

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