Trips

Obama Tours Buchenwald

Says Ahmadinejad should visit.

President Obama toured Buchenwald, a former Nazi concentration camp, on Friday and said he hoped Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would follow in his footsteps. “He should make his own visit,” Obama told NBC in an interview earlier Friday. “I have no patience for people who would deny history.” Earlier in the day, he called for peace in the Middle East with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The United States can't force peace upon the parties,” he said, but America has “at least created the space, the atmosphere, in which talks can restart.” He called upon Israel to live up to its commitments in the so-called “Road Map” and for Palestinians to renounce violence. He also said that he would dispatch special envoy George J. Mitchell to the region next week.