By AMY HARDER
Nearly 250 people packed a room at the Council on Foreign Relations this afternoon to question former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minn., on the forward-looking report [PDF] that they and more than 30 other foreign policy experts produced for the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project last fall.
There was no shortage of timely topics to jump-start the conversation. President Obama has already undertaken a series of actions, such as appointing special envoys to the Middle East and appearing on Arab TV, that suggest he's reaching out to Muslims. While Albright and Weber said they didn't know if the new administration had absorbed the report word for word, Obama seems to be taking the steps the group has put forth, they said.
The media's coverage of the president's early moves, paired with the conflict in Gaza, present the administration with a double-edged sword in its Middle East policy, Weber said. "The good news is that our issues are on the front burner," he said. "The bad news is our issues are really on the front burner." Weber said the administration is in "delicate stages" on various issues throughout the Middle East. Moderator Barbara Slavin, the Washington Times' assistant managing editor for world and national security, brought up two such sensitive topics: the upcoming elections in Israel and Iran. In both cases, Weber and Albright said, the U.S. needs to tread lightly and ensure that it doesn't interject itself into the politics surrounding the elections.
Weber emphasized that he's "most concerned" with the Iranian presidential elections, which take place in June. Iranians hang on America's "every word," he said, adding that the U.S. must be "very, very careful to hold our tongue until after the elections."
In responding to questions from the audience, the two briefly touched upon nearly all the daunting challenges the administration faces in the Middle East: where America's priorities should be regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan, promotion of democracy versus enforcement, and how the media influences both Americans' perception of the Middle East and the Middle East's perception of the U.S.
In recent interviews with with NationalJournal.com, Albright and Weber discussed these topics and more. At the CFR discussion, Albright said that a crucial first step in improving the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world is more comprehensive and educational coverage in the media. It should focus on more than just violence in the Middle East, for instance, Albright said. Weber echoed her thoughts. U.S. press coverage in this region "doesn't give a textured view of what the Middle East is really like," he said.
CFR's Melinda Brouwer, who helped coordinate the event, said that about 240 people attended, including many who were involved in the report, as well as foreign news organizations reporting back to Indonesia and Pakistan. Albright and Weber were certainly a big draw, giving CFR what Brouwer called its biggest audience and camera-drawing press corps since its recent relocation from Massachusetts Avenue to 18th and F streets.
By AMY HARDER
Fresh on the heels of President Obama's exclusive interview with Arab TV network Al Arabiya, Gallup released a survey this afternoon showing respondents in the Middle East and North Africa giving U.S. leadership a dismal 15 percent approval rating.
In his interview on Arab TV, Obama emphasized the importance of reaching out to the Muslim world, and he has taken a series of actions toward this end -- addressing Muslims in his inaugural speech, issuing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and appointing George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke as special envoys to the Middle East.
Former Rep. Vin Weber, R-Minn., who recently contributed to a U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project report advising the new administration on how to improve relationships in the region, praised Obama for his appearance on Al Arabiya and dismissed Gallup's findings as premature.
"There are decades and decades of skepticism of the West ingrained in psyches in people of the Arab world, and that's not going to change on a dime simply because we have a new president," Weber said. "What we have is an opening, an opportunity to change the minds of people. And I think the president has taken the right first steps, and if they see that we're persistent and consistent, I think that we can slowly, over time, change minds."
Gallup pollsters also found that respondents in the region indicated their rating of the U.S. would improve if the country pulled out of Iraq. Weber, for his part, acknowledged that "the invasion itself resonates very badly" with Muslims, but insisted that withdrawing "precipitously" could lead to civil war, even regional war.
Also contributing to the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project report was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who recently spoke with NationalJournal.com about this and other foreign policy challenges Obama will face. Check Lost In Transition later this week for our full interview with Weber.
