DRESDEN, GERMANY, JERUSALEM AND WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Friday that "the moment is now" to settle 60 years of conflict in the Middle East as he sought to stoke momentum for negotiations a day after his address in Cairo that both inspired hopes and rattled nerves across the region.
Obama announced that he was sending George J. Mitchell, his special Mideast envoy, on a mission to the area beginning Sunday. One of Mitchell's stops could be in Syria, which would mark a significant step in the U.S. effort to seek a comprehensive peace to the Arab-Israeli dispute.
But Obama acknowledged during a visit to Germany that the United States can't and won't try to force peace on the region. Instead, it will try to make difficult steps more likely.
"You've probably seen more sustained activity on this issue in the first five months than you would have seen in most previous administrations," Obama said. "And I think given what we've done so far, we've at least created the space, the atmosphere, in which talks can restart."
Obama also sought to adjust perceptions that his speech a day earlier, a long-promised address aimed at improving relations with the Islamic world, was unusually tough on Israel and more sympathetic to the Palestinians.
"Less attention has been focused on the insistence on my part that the Palestinians and the Arab states have to take very concrete actions," he said.
Although Obama offered no new proposals on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the guidelines spelled out in his Cairo address crystallized an increasingly public breach between his administration and the Israeli leadership.
Obama and other U.S. officials have put Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the defensive over the last two weeks for refusing to embrace the goal of an independent Palestinian state and halt the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
In Israel, there is a looming sense that Netanyahu will soon be forced to choose between two perilous alternatives: going along with Obama's vision for the Mideast and risking a revolt that could bring down his right-leaning governing coalition, or defying Israel's most powerful ally and pushing the Jewish state deeper into international isolation.
