By?Chen gongzheng, Wang Wei and Abdel Meguid Kamal
The Islamic world has witnessed "positive signals" in US President Barack Obama's Mideast policy but concrete steps are needed to broker the long-stalled peace process, a high-ranking Arab League (AL) official said Wednesday.
Obama's speech in Turkey was "an important message to the Islamic world, after years of setbacks in its relations with the United States, especially in the wake of the September 11 attacks," said Hesham Youssef, head of the Office of the Secretary-Generalof the AL, a Cairo-based pan-Arab bloc, in an exclusive interview with Xinhua.
Earlier on Monday, Obama said in a firm tone during his visit to Turkey that "the United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam," adding that "the United States strongly supports the goal of two states."
The president's remarks have drawn praises in the region, with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit saying it is the "first and significant" step by the new US government.
Syria's top diplomat Walid Moallem also praised Obama's commitment to two-state solutions, a reference to a permanent settlement of the disputes between the Palestinians and Israel.
"Obama was talking about 'change' in his presidential campaign trail and we did find that there were already changes in many aspects of the US foreign policy, including the president's decision to close the Guantanamo prison and withdraw US troops from Iraq according to a definite timetable," the AL official said.
He believed that the situation in Iraq now is much better, but there are still difficulties despite that things are going in the right direction.
Obama has decided to withdraw all US troops by August 2010, but the Iraqis themselves have yet to control the security situation there.
With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Youssef said that "there are positive signals," referring to Obama's choice of his Mideast special envoy George Mitchell, who will visit the region for the fourth time next week.
"We have confidence in George Mitchell," he said, praising his 2001 Mideast report as "positive and balanced".
Mitchell served on an international commission that examined the escalating violence between the Israelis and Palestinians in 2000 and wrote in the next year a report that called for a halt to Israeli settlements and greater Palestinian efforts to crack down on terrorism.
However, Obama's remarks about two-state solutions are "not new", Youssef pointed out, noting that the previous US administration started to address this issue in Annapolis in 2007.
"The problem is how to achieve this objective," he stressed.
"The Arab world has proposed the Arab Peace Initiative based on the two-state solution but...the new Israeli government deals with this issue negatively," he said.
The Arab Peace Initiative was proposed at the 2002 AL Beirut summit that offered Israel normal ties in return for its withdrawal from the Arab land seized in 1967.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office lauded Obama's commitment to the US ally's security shortly after the US president's Ankara speech on Monday, but it fell short of mentioning Obama's remarks on two-state solutions.
Last Wednesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that making concessions with the Arabs will bring not peace but more wars and his country is not bound by the agreement of the Annapolis conference.
Response to Lieberman's remarks is considered "the first test" now for the international community and the United States, Youssef said.
"The international community must speak out," he stressed.
He also expressed the AL's support for Egyptian efforts to achieve inter-Palestinian reconciliation, hoping that the Fatah-Hamas dialogue would resume by the end of April.
"Without the Palestinian unity, it will be difficult for the Palestinians to deal with the negative development on the Israeli side and the region in general," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency April 10, 2009)
