US President Barack Obama was scheduled to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House yesterday, with the US push for a two-state solution in the Middle East thrown into doubt by Israel’s new government.
The king was to make his first visit to the White House since Obama became president in January, vowing to work for peace in the Middle East, and officials said the talks would focus squarely on the Israeli-Palestinian question.
The encounter comes amid uncertainty about the early relationship between the Obama administration and the new Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has declined to back a Palestinian state.
PHOTO: AP
“I think the biggest topic, obviously, is going to be the Middle East peace process and where we are in that,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday.
“The president has promised to be engaged repeatedly in ensuring a lasting peace there. And that will almost certainly be the dominant topic,” Gibbs said.
Obama was to welcome the King to his private dining room before the two leaders headed into the Oval Office for expanded talks including delegations from both sides, the White House said.
Gibbs was also asked about reports from Israel that Netanyahu, who last week met US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, could visit the US and have his own talks with Obama as soon as next month.
“If the prime minister is here, the president would be anxious to sit down and talk with him, as he sat down and talked with him last year about this and other subjects that relate to our security,” Gibbs said.
But the spokesman was unable to offer any firm date on when such a meeting might take place.
Obama met both Netanyahu, who was then in opposition, and King Abdullah during a visit to their two countries last year.
On that occasion, Abdullah and Obama appeared to get along well and the King took the unusual step of personally driving the future US president from his palace to the steps of his campaign plane at Amman airport.
In recent weeks, Obama has made clear to Israel that he believes the path to peace lies in already agreed frameworks made in the stalled road-map plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace and the Annapolis agreement.
Two weeks ago, in an address to Turkey’s parliament, Obama said “the United States strongly supports the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.”
His remarks came after Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the 2007 Annapolis document did not bind Israel though he did accept the road map as the basis for progress.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS