Merkel: Obama offers ‘unique opportunity’ for MidEast - President to visit Buchenwald concentration camp

Merkel: Obama offers ‘unique opportunity’ for MidEast - President to visit Buchenwald concentration camp
By Chris Bryant in Dresden
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: June 5 2009 12:23 | Last updated: June 5 2009 13:23
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d6e5affc-51bf-11de-b986-00144feabdc0.html


Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on Friday described Barack Obama’s presidency as a “unique opportunity” to revive the Middle East peace process as the US leader continued his international tour with a stop in the historic eastern city of Dresden.

Speaking ahead of a symbolic visit to the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp that his great-uncle helped to liberate, Mr Obama said he was confident that “serious progress” could be made this year on Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, described Barack Obama's presidency as a 'unique opportunity' to revive the Middle East peace process as the US leader continued his international tour with a stop in Dresden before visiting Buchenwald concentration camp

The US president landed in Germany following a widely-praised speech in Cairo, where he had appealed for a “new beginning” in relations between the US and the Muslim world and urged Palestine and Israel to work towards a two-state solution.

Mr Obama said that address had been “just one speech” and would not replace all the “hard work” that now needed to be done in the Middle East.

While the media had made a great deal of his comments for Israel to stop settlement expansion, Mr Obama said it was equally important that Palestinians now resolve their internal issues.

He said Palestine must take “very concrete actions” in order to convince Israel it could provide the security it seeks and prevent incitement of hatred, adding that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestian president, had made progress on this issue but “not enough”.

The meeting in Dresden, a city almost totally destroyed by US and UK bombing during the second world war but since lovingly restored, was also a chance for Mr Obama and Ms Merkel to confront rumours that relations between the two countries had soured.

Mr Obama insisted that US-German relations were “outstanding” and blamed “simple logistics” for his decision not to visit the German capital before flying on to Normandy on Saturday. The US president is due to take part in events marking the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

German media had speculated that a decision to bar Mr Obama from speaking at the Brandenburg Gate last summer during the US election campaign, together with Germany’s reluctance to accept detainees from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, had led to cooled relations between the two leaders.

Mr Obama admitted that resolving the issue of what to do with Guantanamo inmates was going to take more than two or three months but emphasised that he had not asked for, nor received any firm commitments from Germany on this issue.

The two leaders also discussed the global economic crisis, upcoming climate talks and Iran’s nuclear programme.

Crowds gathered in the old market square in Dresden to catch a glimpse of the president, where local officials had distributed flyers proudly declaring “Ich bin ein Dresdner”, in homage to president John F Kennedy’s famous 1963 speech.

Mr Obama will visit Buchenwald later on Friday, where 250,000 people were imprisoned by the Nazis and more than 50,000 killed.

He will also drop in on a US military hospital to pay tribute to soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq.