Obama in Saudi to open Muslim dialogue
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President Barack Obama is beginning his latest bid to open a dialogue with the Muslim world by paying a call on Saudi King Abdullah, guardian of Islam's sacred sites in Mecca and Medina.
The monarch of Saudi Arabia plans to greet Obama at Riyadh's main airport with coffee and ceremony when he arrives Wednesday after an overnight flight from Washington.
Saudi Arabia is a stopover en route to Cairo, where Obama is to set deliver a speech that he's been promising since last year's election campaign — aiming to set a new tone in America's often-strained dealings with the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.
Many of those Muslims still smolder over Iraq, Guantanamo and unflinching U.S. support of Israel, but they are hoping the son of a Kenyan Muslim who lived part of his childhood in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, can help chart a new course.
"You know, there are misapprehensions about the West, on the part of the Muslim world," Obama said in a pretrip interview with the BBC. "And, obviously, there are some big misapprehensions about the Muslim world when it comes to those of us in the West."
The monarch of Saudi Arabia plans to greet Obama at Riyadh's main airport with coffee and ceremony when he arrives Wednesday after an overnight flight from Washington.
Saudi Arabia is a stopover en route to Cairo, where Obama is to set deliver a speech that he's been promising since last year's election campaign — aiming to set a new tone in America's often-strained dealings with the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.
Many of those Muslims still smolder over Iraq, Guantanamo and unflinching U.S. support of Israel, but they are hoping the son of a Kenyan Muslim who lived part of his childhood in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, can help chart a new course.
"You know, there are misapprehensions about the West, on the part of the Muslim world," Obama said in a pretrip interview with the BBC. "And, obviously, there are some big misapprehensions about the Muslim world when it comes to those of us in the West."
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