United States President, Barack Obama, arrives in Saudi Arabia.

--- : United States President, Barack Obama, arrives in Saudi Arabia.

Auther: Niila |

Date : 3 June 2009 |

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Mark Smith
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — Associated Press, Wednesday, Jun. 03, 2009 01:40PM EDT

President Barack Obama began his latest bid to open a dialogue with the Muslim world Wednesday by seeking the counsel of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's two holiest sites in Mecca and Medina.

“The United States and Saudi Arabia have a long history of friendship. We have a strategic relationship,” Mr. Obama said as he visited the monarch's desert horse farm. The U.S. president called King Abdullah wise and gracious, adding: “I am confident that working together that the United States and Saudi Arabia can make progress on a whole host of issues of mutual interest.”

In turn, King Abdullah expressed his “best wishes to the friendly American people who are represented by a distinguished man who deserves to be in this position.”

Earlier, the king greeted Mr. Obama at Riyadh's main airport with a ceremony when the new U.S. president arrived after an overnight flight from Washington. Each country's national anthem was played, the Saudi national guard was on hand and there was a 21-gun salute.

Mr. Obama and King Abdullah then sat together in gilded chairs, sipped cardamom-flavoured Arabic coffee from small cups and chatted briefly in public before retreating to hold private talks on a range of issues.

Around the same time Air Force One touched down in the country, Al-Jazeera Television broadcast a new audio tape from Osama bin Laden in which he threatened Americans and said Mr. Obama inflamed hatred toward the U.S. by ordering Pakistan to crack down on militants in Swat Valley and block Islamic law there.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, in Saudi Arabia with Mr. Obama, said al-Qaeda obviously is seeking to shift attention away from what he called the president's historic efforts to have an open dialogue with the Muslim world.

Saudi Arabia is a stopover en route to Cairo, where Mr. Obama is set to deliver a speech that he's been promising since last year's election campaign — aiming to set a new tone in America's often-strained dealings with the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.

With King Abdullah alongside him, Mr. Obama told reporters: “I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty's counsel and to discuss with him many of the issues that we confront here in the Middle East.”

In a pre-trip interview with the BBC, Mr. Obama set the tone for his swing through the Middle East, saying: “What we want to do is open a dialogue.”

“You know, there are misapprehensions about the West, on the part of the Muslim world. And, obviously, there are some big misapprehensions about the Muslim world when it comes to those of us in the West,” Mr. Obama said.

Many of those Muslims still smoulder over Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and unflinching U.S. support of Israel, but they are hoping the son of a Kenyan Muslim who lived part of his childhood in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, can help chart a new course.

Aides cautioned that Mr. Obama was not out to break new policy ground in his Cairo speech, which follows visits to Turkey and Iraq in April and a series of outreach efforts including a Persian New Year video and a student town hall meeting in Istanbul. And they said the president is not expecting quick results, even though the speech will be distributed as widely as possible.

“We don't expect that everything will change after one speech,” Mr. Gibbs, the press secretary, said Tuesday. “I think it will take a sustained effort and that's what the president is in for.”

Officials said Mr. Obama also wouldn't flinch from difficult topics, whether it's the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, the goal of a Palestinian state or democracy and human rights. Mr. Obama has been criticized for setting the address in Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak has jailed dissidents and clung to power for nearly three decades.

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