Israelism, Palestinians not making ‘extra effort’

JAKARTA, Indonesia – President Barack Obama, visiting the world’s most populous Muslim nation, expressed deep concern Tuesday that Israelis and Palestinians aren’t making the “extra effort” to secure a breakthrough for achieving Middle East peace.Obama said he hasn’t seen the kind of progress in negotiations that “could finally create a framework for a secure Israel living side by side in peace with a sovereign Palestine.” Asked at a news conference with Indonesia’s President Suslilo Bambang Yudhoyono about Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem, Obama said, “Each of these incremental steps can end up breaking that trust between these parties.”Obama raised his Mideast concerns while appearing with Yudhoyono during his first visit to Indonesia as president to the country where he lived for four years as a child. He marveled over “sights and sounds” that evoked memories of the past and said that Indonesia’s landscape of today barely resembles the land where he went to live at age 6 in 1967 after his mother married an Indonesian man.The U.S. sees Indonesia as a counterweight to China’s growing strength, though Obama said Tuesday he’s not seeking to stop China’s growth.”We think China being prosperous and secure is a positive,” Obama said. “We’re not interested in containing that process.”Still, with the controversy over how China values its currency looming as Obama heads to the G-20 economic summit in South Korea later this week, Obama said all countries must operate within, “an international framework and sets of rules in which countries recognize their responsibilities to each other.” (AP)