RIYADH, (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama was sharply criticised by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden yesterday as he held talks in Saudi Arabia on issues including the Arab-Israeli conflict before a major speech to the Islamic world.
The Saudi-born bin Laden accused Obama of planting “seeds for hatred and revenge against America” in a recording aired by Al Jazeera shortly after the U.S. leader arrived in the kingdom. The White House said it was bin Laden’s “effort to upstage” Obama’s address in Cairo today.
“I don’t think it’s surprising that al Qaeda would want to shift attention away from the president’s historic and continued efforts to have an open dialogue with the Muslim world,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters in Riyadh.
Obama, whose father was Muslim and who lived in Indonesia as a boy, is trying to use the speech to mend a U.S. image badly damaged in the Islamic world by former President George W. Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the treatment of U.S. military detainees.
He planned to urge Arabs and Israelis in the speech to say publicly what they acknowledge in private about Middle East peace moves and Iran, the New York Times said.
“Stop saying one thing behind closed doors and saying something else publicly,” Obama said. “There are a lot of Arab countries more concerned about Iran developing a nuclear weapon than the ‘threat’ from Israel, but won’t admit it,” he told the Times.
Many Israelis, he said, “recognise that their current path is unsustainable, and they need to make some tough choices on settlements to achieve a two-state solution — that is in their long-term interest — but not enough folks are willing to recognise that publicly.”
White House advisers said the Arab-Israeli conflict was one element in a 45-minute speech that would also deal with U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq as well as the president’s effort to engage Iran on nuclear non-proliferation issues. And they tried to play down expectations.
“There’s been a breach, an undeniable breach between America and the Islamic world, and that breach has been years in the making and it’s not going to be reversed with one speech or perhaps in one administration,” said Obama adviser David Axelrod.
