In Germany, Obama strikes an urgent note on Mideast peace

Though many Israelis support the government's positions on settlements and Palestinian sovereignty, they feel uneasy about alienating the United States, especially at a time when Netanyahu's top foreign policy priority is to confront Iran. Israeli officials quietly voiced irritation that Obama seemed to soften on Iran in his speech, which contained no warning that development of a nuclear weapon would lead to a military clash with the United States.

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More friction

A new sign of tension over Jewish settlements appeared Friday. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in Washington that there is no record that the George W. Bush administration secretly agreed to permit some growth in the enclaves. Israelis have cited such an agreement in response to Obama's demand that settlement activity be frozen.

"There is no memorialization of any informal and oral agreements," Clinton said in an appearance at the State Department. "If they did occur, which of course people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the United States government."

A prominent conservative Israeli lawmaker rejected U.S. involvement in the issue.

"With all due respect to President Obama -- and there is respect -- and to the deep friendship between Israel and the United States, no foreign leader of another country will set policy in Judea and Samaria," Ofir Akonis, a member of parliament with Netanyahu's conservative Likud Party, told Army Radio. Judea and Samaria is an Israeli term for the West Bank.

Obama's remarks came on a day when he visited Buchenwald, the onetime Nazi concentration camp in Germany, where he praised the human spirit and honored Israel, which was founded in the postwar years.

Before that, Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke at a castle in Dresden, which was heavily bombed by the Allies in World War II and became a symbol of the destructive power of modern warfare.

The president also visited wounded U.S. troops at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a U.S. military hospital in Germany, awarding six Purple Heart medals to soldiers and Marines.

Today, the president visits France to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the D-day landing in Normandy.

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Reaction to speech

His speech in Cairo built new pressure for talks that would settle the decades-old dispute between Israel and its Arab neighbors.