BARACK Obama called yesterday for a redoubling of efforts to establish separate Israeli and Palestinian states, as part of his attempt to resolve the conflicts surrounding the Jewish nation in the post-Holocaust era.
He later became the first United States president to visit the former Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany, where he laid a single white rose at a memorial tablet and was visibly moved as he toured cremation ovens, barbed-wire fences and gu
ard towers.
An estimated 56,000 people, including some 11,000 Jews, perished there at the hands of Nazis. The stop was also personal for Mr Obama: his great-uncle Charlie Payne helped liberate a nearby satellite camp, Ohrdruf, in April 1945, days before other US army units overran Buchenwald.
Mr Obama said: "These sites have not lost their horror with the passage of time. More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished."
Accompanying the US president were Elie Wiesel, an author, 1986 Nobel peace laureate and Holocaust survivor, whose father died of starvation at Buchenwald three months before liberation, and Bertrand Herz, another survivor of the camp.
In a pointed message to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has expressed doubts that six million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis, Mr Obama said: "To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened. This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history. This place teaches us that we must be ever vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time."
Before he visited Buchenwald, Mr Obama had met privately with German chancellor Angela Merkel in a castle in Dresden, the
city in eastern Germany that still stands testament to bitter wartime memories.
However, the president made no reference to the period in February 1945, when first British and then US bombers pounded the city, killing some 25,000 people and creating an enduring controversy.
Mr Obama did press for progress toward Middle East peace, saying: "The moment is now for us to act."
He conceded the US "can't force peace upon the parties" but pointed out it had "at least created the space, the atmosphere, in which talks can restart". And he added: "Each side is going to have to make some difficult compromises."
As well as the Middle East, the leaders also discussed the nuclear stand-off with Iran, the global financial crisis, climate change and the fate of prisoners at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Mr Obama is hugely popular with people in Germany, but relations between Washington and Berlin have been less than smooth since he took office in January. Ms Merkel prevented Mr Obama from speaking at the Brandenburg Gate last summer during his presidential campaign and, facing an election in September, she has resisted US pressure to take inmates from Guantanamo Bay and send more troops to Afghanistan.
The brevity of Mr Obama's stay in Germany and his decision not to go to Berlin sparked speculation in the German media of a rift, forcing the president to dismiss this as "wild speculation".
He insisted: "The truth of the matter is the relationship between our two countries and governments is outstanding."
He also said he was not seeking any commitments from Germany to take a dozen terrorism suspects when the US closes Guantanamo Bay. German officials have said most should be resettled in the US.
Yesterday, Ms Merkel said her country was prepared to "constructively contribute" to the US closure efforts and added that she was confident of eventually reaching a "common solution" on the prisoners' fate.
After the Buchenwald tour, Mr Obama flew to Landstuhl medical hospital for private visits with US troops recovering from injuries sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He ended the day in Paris, where he was reunited with his wife, Michelle, and daughters Malia and Sasha, who planned a brief holiday in the city after marking the 65th anniversary of the Allies' D-Day invasion.
The full article contains 689 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
