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.
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