Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Obama to visit Saudi Arabia

Obama's big speech to the Muslim world is next week in Cairo, Egypt. While in the Middle East, Obama will visit Saudi Arabia to continue to broker the peace.

U.S. President Barack Obama will meet Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in Riyadh next week to seek his support over the nuclear standoff with Iran and reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Obama will visit Riyadh on June 3 in a surprise addition to his scheduled three-day trip to Egypt, Germany and France, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, is a staunch U.S. ally in the region and potentially a key player in the drive for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which Obama has declared a top foreign policy priority.

The Obama administration has embraced the 2002 Arab peace initiative, a proposal authored by Saudi Arabia that offered Israel normal ties with all Arab states in return for a full withdrawal from the lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East war, creation of a Palestinian state and a "just solution" for Palestinian refugees. read more here.....

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