Obama reaps diplomatic windfall as goodwill lingers

By Helene Cooper Published: February 26, 2009

WASHINGTON: The honeymoon period between President Barack Obama and Congress may be running its course in Washington. But on the world stage, the romantic flame is still flickering.

Three years ago, President George W. Bush could barely get the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan to be polite to each other — let alone shake hands — when he dragged Pervez Musharraf and Hamid Karzai to the White House. But this week, things were decidedly warmer as the new Obama administration played host in Washington to high-level delegations from the two countries for talks aimed at producing a new strategy.

At a three-way dinner with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday night, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi of Pakistan and his Afghan counterpart, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, made nice, assuring each other that they were committed to fighting extremists in both countries, administration officials and diplomats said. While it's not exactly on par with Yitzhak Rabin reluctantly extending his hand to Yasser Arafat in 1993, South Asia experts noted that just getting the two camps in the same room to talk about a common approach was a step in the right direction.

Similarly, the Bush administration spent three years urging the Egyptian government to free Ayman Nour, the country's most prominent political dissident, to no avail. But last week, in a move that many interpreted as a goodwill gesture, the Egyptian government abruptly released Nour, citing "medical reasons."

And two weeks ago, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia dismissed two powerful religious figures — including the head of the cane-wielding religious police known as the mutawa — as part of a government shuffle that appeared aimed at reforming the kingdom's hard-line religious establishment.