President Barack Obama voiced confidence that the United States can help get ”serious negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinians back on track, in an interview with the BBC broadcast on Tuesday.
Speaking before his maiden trip to the region this week including a keynote address in Egypt, he added that he hoped for progress in direct talks with Iran by the end of this year.
On Middle East peace talks, he said the US believes it is ”going to be able to get serious negotiations back on track” between Israel and the Palestinians, he told the British broadcaster.
”Not only is it in the interest of the Palestinian people to have a state, it’s in the interest of the Israeli people to stabilise the situation there,” he added.
Obama’s comments come as he prepares to embark late on Tuesday on a visit to the Middle East, where he is scheduled on Thursday to make a high-profile speech at a university in the Egyptian capital Cairo.
On Iran, the US president told the BBC that he hopes for progress in contacts with the Islamic republic this year.
”Although I don’t want to put artificial timetables on that process, we do want to make sure that, by the end of this year, we’ve actually seen a serious process move forward,” he said.
In other comments ahead of a visit first to Saudi Arabia and Egypt and then Europe, Obama said the US must lead by example — which firstly meant closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp on Cuba.
But he also warned that Washington could not force other countries to accept its values.
”The danger I think is when the United States or any country thinks that we can simply impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture,” the president told the broadcaster.
But he stressed: ”Democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion — those are not simply principles of the West to be hoisted on these countries, but rather what I believe to be universal principles that they can embrace and affirm as part of their national identity.” — AFP
