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Mideast: Hezbollah attacks Obama speech in Cairo
[ADN Kronos] A bid by US president Barack Obama to reach out to the Muslim world has already come under attack from Islamists in the Middle East. Obama delivered an historic speech in the Egyptian capital Cairo on Thursday in which he sought to create a "new beginning" in relations between America and the Muslim world.An MP from the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah was one of the first to attack the president's overture. "The Islamic world does not need moral or political sermons. It needs a fundamental change in American policy beginning from a halt to complete support for Israeli aggression on the region, especially on Lebanese and Palestinians, to an American withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan," said Hassan Fadlallah. Mohamed Habib, deputy leader of Egypt's banned Muslim Brotherhood, echoed Fadlallah's criticism. "It's a public relations address more than anything else," he said. "There's an unjust perspective on the part of the American president towards the Palestinian issue, one that does not differ from former president Bush's and the neoconservatives' perspective." Meanwhile, an Israeli minister rejected Obama's call for the dismantling of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank. "In his speech, Obama ignored the fact that Palestinians are yet to renounce the path of terror...Our relations with the Americans are based on friendship and not on surrender. With regards to natural growth in the settlements we must tell the Americans -- No more," said Israel's minister of science and technology Daniel Hershkowitz, quoted by Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, praised Obama's speech and said it would open a "new page" in relations with the Arab and Muslim world. The secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, told Dubai-based Arab TV network al-Arabiya that Obama's speech was based on dialogue rather than attacks against Islam and thus "different from that position adopted by the administration of George W. Bush." Posted by: 2009-06-05 |
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