Diplomacy

Obama to Talk to Muslims

Says he will give speech in an Islamic capital.

The Los Angeles Times has scored Obama’s first post-election newspaper interview. What does the president-elect have to say? Most interesting are his comments on potentially giving a speech in an Islamic capital. “This is something that I talked about doing in the campaign and it's something that I intend to follow through on. What the time frame is, how we structure that, you know, is something that I will determine with my national security team in the coming weeks and months. But I think we've got a unique opportunity to reboot America's image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular. So, we need to take advantage of that and the message I want to send is that we will be unyielding in stamping out the kind of terrorist extremism that we saw in Mumbai. We will be at the same time unrelenting in our desire to create a relationship of mutual respect and partnership with countries and peoples of goodwill who want their citizens and ours to prosper together. And I think that the world is ready for that message.”