Obama on Arab Television: United States not the enemy

US President Barack Obama chose an Arabic satellite TV network for his first formal TV interview as President, delivering a message on Tuesday to the Muslim world that “Americans are not your enemy”.

The interview underscored Mr Obama’s commitment to repair relations with the Muslim world that have suffered under the previous administration. The President expressed an intention to engage West Asia immediately, and his new envoy to the region, former senator George J. Mitchell, was expected to arrived in Egypt on Tuesday for a visit that will also take him to Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

“My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy,” Mr Obama told the Saudi owned, Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel. Mr Obama noted that the US had made mistakes in the past, but “that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that”.

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