Obama to address Muslims’ future

T-shirts in Egypt proclaim the U.S. president as the next King Tut.

McClatchy Newspapers

CAIRO, Egypt — In his speech today to Muslims around the world, President Barack Obama will speak in detail about extremism, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and “what he thinks needs to be done on all sides” to reach peace between Israelis and Palestinians, his aides said Wednesday.

On the eve of his address, Obama was still tinkering with the final text he’ll deliver at Cairo University, according to Ben Rhodes, one of his speechwriters.

En route to Egypt, Obama landed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to visit King Abdullah, saying he wanted to “come to the place where Islam began” before giving the address and to ask for the Saudi king’s backing on a range of economic and foreign-policy issues.

In an apparent bid to upstage the speech, al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden released an audiotape accusing the president of inflaming Muslim hatred of the U.S. by directing Pakistan to launch its month-old military offensive to wrest back the Swat Valley from the Pakistani Taliban. He said that Obama’s policies were no different from former President George W. Bush’s.

In Cairo, meanwhile, some of Egypt’s best-known dissidents were preparing to attend the speech, an unusual opportunity in a land where political expression is discouraged.

Millions of ordinary citizens were bracing not only for what America’s president would say but also for the impact that his security precautions might have on commerce and mobility in this already gridlocked mega-city.

Obama’s brief Egyptian visit was to include a. meeting with President Hosni Mubarak, a tour of a famous mosque and a visit to the Pyramids.

Some entrepreneurs were hawking speech souvenirs, including a popular T-shirt that proclaims Obama as the world’s next King Tut.

The president widely consulted Muslim Americans inside and outside the U.S. government, Rhodes said, in preparation for the remarks to an invitation-only crowd of about 3,500, plus millions watching on television.

The administration was arranging a major online initiative to engage Muslims worldwide. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the text, videos and translations would be carried via Facebook, which has about 20 million users in Muslim countries, as well as MySpace and Twitter. Additionally, Gibbs said, cell phone users can subscribe to www.America.gov/sms.html for speech-related text messages.