WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will give a major speech, possibly as early as next week, laying out his new Mideast strategy after the killing of Osama Bin Laden and amid upheaval in the Arab World, US officials said Wednesday. A key sticking point is whether Obama, who gained a boost in global stature with the death of the Al-Qaeda chief last week, will also use his coming address to present new proposals for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, a source familiar with the administration's internal debate said. Obama, who will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on May 20, is considering giving the speech before he leaves on a trip to Europe early in the week of May 22, a senior administration official said. Obama spokesman Jay Carney, speaking at the daily White House briefing, said the president would deliver an address on Middle East policy “fairly soon” but declined to provide further details. The administration, seeking to counter criticism it has struggled to keep pace with turmoil in the Arab World, has been crafting a new US strategy for the region since shortly after popular uprisings erupted, toppling rulers in Egypt and Tunisia and engulfing Libya in near-civil war. The killing of Bin Laden will give Obama a chance to make the case for Arabs to reject Al-Qaeda's militancy and embrace democratic change in a new era of relations with Washington. Though Obama has made repairing US ties with the Muslim World a key thrust of his foreign policy, one US official said the coming address would be “about political change in the Middle East and North Africa, not about Islam.” Still, by invoking the death of Bin Laden, Obama will inevitably be speaking to a broader Muslim audience. The date of Obama's speech has not been set, administration sources stressed. But whatever the timing, it is expected to seek to clarify what has been called the “Obama doctrine,” a still-fuzzy prescription for dealing with Mideast unrest. A complicating factor for Obama's speech is whether the time is ripe for him to present new ideas aimed at reviving long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. Many Israelis are already unsettled over the implications for the Jewish state from unrest in the broader Mideast, and a new reconciliation deal between the mainstream Palestinian Fatah faction and its rival, the Islamist Hamas movement, has raised further doubts about peace prospects. While there is little doubt Obama will use his meeting with Netanyahu to try to advance Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, it is unclear how hard Obama is willing to push for concessions from a leader with whom he already has strained relations.
