Obama arrives in Egypt
13:57, 4 June 2009
CAIRO. June 4. KAZINFORM U.S. President Barack Obama arrived Thursday morning in Cairo, where he will hold talks with his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak and deliver a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world in Cairo University, Kazinform refers to Xinhua.
He was received by the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, instead of Mubarak as media earlier reported, before getting into the car heading for the al-Qobbah palace where he will meet with Mubarak.
The U.S. president will give his long-awaited key speech to the Muslim world at about 1:10 p.m. (1010 GMT), according to a schedule obtained by Xinhua. The speech had been promised by Obama after he assumed office in January, a move viewed as his reach out to the Muslims to mend the U.S.-Muslim ties tarnished by his predecessor's administration.
Earlier in April, Obama said during his visit to Turkey that his country "is not and will never be at war with Islam," which is lauded by Cairo as the "first and significant" step for easing the tensions between the United States and the Muslim world.
Cairo is the second leg of Obama's Middle East tour. On Wednesday, he held talks in Riyadh with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, an oil power and U.S. regional ally which proposed the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, Kazinform cites Xinhua. See www.chinaview.cn for full version.