Obama says Indonesia, U.S. 'on right path' - USA Today

JAKARTA, Indonesia — President Obama on Tuesday said his efforts to find ways to cooperate with Indonesia were "direct results of my call ... for a new beginning between the United States and Muslim communities."Yet he said progress on that front has not been entirely successful.

"Our efforts have been earnest, sustained," Obama said. "We don't expect that we are going to completely eliminate some of the misunderstandings and mistrust that have developed ... but we do think that we're on the right path."

After visiting the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, Obama will deliver a speech today at the University of Indonesia on just whom the United States is fighting and why.

The speech was also to focus on what Obama said were shared values of religious tolerance and unity in diversity.

"I have made it clear that America is not, and never will be, at war with Islam," he said in remarks prepared prior to the speech and distributed to the news media.

"Instead, all of us must defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates, who have no claim to be leaders of any religion — certainly not a great, world religion like Islam."

Most of Indonesia's 240 million people follow a moderate form of Islam.

But some Indonesians oppose U.S. policies in the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia.

The radical group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia protested Obama's visit earlier in the week, and on Tuesday members of the Muslim movement GPI held a demonstration to criticize what they say is American hunger for Indonesian resources.

Obama's Kenyan father was a Muslim, but Obama is a Christian.

His former elementary teacher Effendi, 65, said that Obama was registered as a Muslim student because of his Indonesian stepfather.

Effendi, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name.

"He went to the (Muslim) prayer room on Fridays like the other pupils," said Effendi, but his parents insisted he study Islam and Catholicism, he said. "Sometimes he didn't know which classroom he should go to," Effendi said of the 10-year-old Obama.

Effendi said Obama's youthful experience here leaves him confident that "Obama can improve relations between the USA, Indonesia and Islam."

At a joint news conference Tuesday with Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Obama said "what we're trying to do is make sure that we are building bridges and expanding our interactions with Muslim countries."

The rise of militant Islam and terrorist strikes in Indonesia have spurred deeper cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism. But some local analysts doubted the speech's impact.

"He will express his strong commitment to embrace the Islamic world. But it will remain rhetoric," Azyumardi Azra, an Islamic scholar, told the Jakarta Post newspaper.

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