Barack Obama has called for a meeting of regional powerbrokers in the Middle East to negotiate a broader political solution to current instability, in a potential glimpse into longer term US strategy for resolving the civil wars in Syria and Iraq.
Speaking before the United Nations general assembly, the president said it was “time for a broader negotiation in which major powers address their differences directly, honestly, and peacefully across the table from one another, rather than through gun-wielding proxies”.
Pressure is growing in Washington for Obama to explain how recent US strikes against Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq will bring about a more lasting political settlement and his comments may indicate an eventual willingness to negotiate with Shia leaders in Iran over their involvement in both countries.
Earlier international talks in Geneva to end the Syrian civil war have foundered over the continued US insistence that president Bashar al-Assad must stand down, but negotiations did succeed in agreeing the destruction of his chemical weapon stocks.
It is hard to see the US administration dropping its opposition to Assad, but the government in Damascus claims it was given warning of US air strikes this week in a potential sign of new cooperation.
And Obama appeared to signal a tougher line with the Sunni countries in the region who have backed rebel groups fighting Assad – despite their support this week for US air strikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria.
In thinly veiled criticism of Gulf states who the US believes allow funds to flow to Islamic extremists and hardline religious schools across the Middle East, the president said there would be no lasting peace until such radicalism was checked at its root.
“It is time for a new compact among the civilised peoples of this world to eradicate war at its most fundamental source: the corruption of young minds by violent ideology,” said Obama.
“That means cutting off the funding that fuels this hate. It’s time to end the hypocrisy of those who accumulate wealth through the global economy, and then siphon funds to those who teach children to tear it down.”
Obama’s wide-ranging UN speech even included fresh calls to Israel to re-open talks over a two-state solution to the Palestinian dispute, warning that “the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza is not sustainable”.
“As bleak as the landscape appears, America will never give up the pursuit of peace,” he said.
“The violence engulfing the region today has made too many Israelis ready to abandon the hard work of peace,” added Obama.
But the president argued that conflict across the Middle East showed it was not just Palestinian grievances fuelling radicalisation, and said it was “time to acknowledge the destruction wrought by proxy wars and terror campaigns between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East”.
“Ultimately, the task of rejecting sectarianism and extremism is a generational task – a task for the people of the Middle East themselves,” concluded the US president. “No external power can bring about a transformation of hearts and minds.”