Mixed Response to Obama Speech

President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world generated a flurry of reactions in the Syrian media with some praising his conciliatory words and others accusing him of ignoring key issues.



Two days after the US president’s speech at Cairo University on June 5, pro-government newspaper Al-Watan said the address had underlined some positions shared by Washington and Damascus.



The daily’s editor-in-chief Wadah Abd-Rabo noted that following the speech – in which the president said he was seeking a new beginning between America and Muslims around the world – there were no reasons for tensions to remain between Washington and Damascus.



He said that his country agreed with the Americans over the importance of diplomacy and dialogue in solving the region’s problems.



The editor-in-chief argued that Syria supported resistance movements because it believes in “freedom, dignity and equality” – which, he said, were the same principles that Obama praised in his talk about black people’s rights struggle in the US.



He suggested that the US president would come round to Syria’s point of view.



“Obama will definitely visit Syria when he realises that the core of his speech coincides with the basis of decades [of] Syrian policies, and that all accusations made by the former American administration against Syria were false,” he wrote.



On the same day, the official newspaper Al-Thawra criticised Obama’s speech for what it said was a lack of substance.



Asaad Aboud, the daily’s editor-in-chief, wrote that in his address, the president did not cover key issues, such as strategies for establishing peace in the region.



In a June 6 opinion piece, the official Tishreen newspaper also criticised Obama for what it said was his “vague” approach to the Palestinian issue.



Omar Jaftali wrote that the region needed a clearer American vision of the peace process, in which it outlined concrete procedures, in order to end what it said was the “mess” created by an Israeli occupation of Arab land.



At the same time, however, the author praised Obama for breaking with the policies of his predecessor George Bush and using conciliatory language with the Muslim world.



Meanwhile, the banned Muslim Brotherhood Party said that Obama’s “emotional” speech was useless, as it neither achieved justice nor restored Muslims’ rights in Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan or Afghanistan, it said.



In a statement posted on its official website on June 6, the group denounced Obama’s stance on the Palestinian issue, arguing that the US president does not differ from his predecessors who were all “biased toward the Zionists”.



The group also criticised what it said was Obama’s “shallow” interpretation of democracy, which turned a blind eye to corrupt and dictatorial regimes in the region, it said.