The world has become so used to political spin doctors working assiduously before and after major political events, it was easy to believe President Barack Hussein Obama’s address to the Muslim world yesterday at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University would not live up to its billing. However not only did it do so, it perhaps exceeded the expectations of even the most hopeful. Of equal importance, this was a speech that needed no spin-doctoring after the president left the podium.

The message was crystal clear, short on rhetoric and long on reality. He accepted no single speech could itself dispel mistrust but both America and the Muslim world should abandon crude stereotypes of each other. People should focus on what they have in common, not what divides them. Obama said his foreign policy was rooted in diplomacy and international consensus, not in imposing Washington’s will.

Having stated US commitment to Israel was “unbreakable”, he went on to decry Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine and once more condemn West Bank settlements. The only false note in the entire address came when he deplored Palestinian violence, “shooting rockets at sleeping children or blowing up old women on a bus”, but left hanging unspoken in the air an equal denunciation of Israel’s even more bloody bombardment of the helpless citizens of Gaza.

He called on Hamas to end violence and recognize Israel’s right to exist, but tucked away a few minutes later was a fascinating comment, which in a speech so carefully crafted, could not have been a mistake. Having said America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, he said equally “we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.” Hamas won a peaceful election victory in January 2006 but George W. Bush rejected it, plunging Palestinians into bitter division. The Lebanese vote on Sunday may elect a Hezbollah majority. Does this mean Obama will welcome such an outcome and if he does, is this a way of trying to prove to Iranians that they can do business with him, whoever wins their June 12 presidential election?

Adroitly Obama argued the threat of extremist violence united all the children of Abraham and quoted from the Holy Qur’an, the Torah and the Bible the message of promoting peace. Extremism threatened the world just as much as recession, influenza and nuclear proliferation.

He ended as he began by calling for “a new beginning.” In the mouths of so many other politicians, that ambition would die with the echo of the words. However, a combination of his extraordinary oratory, his charisma, his background and his personal experience of Islam gave the ambitions he expressed genuine weight. Only Al-Qaeda and Zionist extremists could recoil from this speech in dangerous exasperation.

Now though comes the hard part. Obama has made his case and made it brilliantly. If rhetoric alone could bring justice to the Palestinians, today they would be free. Instead ahead lie long, tough negotiations, beset by mistrust and domestic political and personal risks. Obama’s skills and sincerity will both be tested.

Remembering Tiananmen

The Independent in its editorial yesterday commented on the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989. Excerpts:

It would have been unrealistic to expect that the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest would be commemorated by China's leaders with public pledges of greater openness and pluralism. Such a prospect, alas, still belongs in the realms of fantasy. But Beijing's continued refusal even to mention the democracy movement or come clean about exactly what happened on the night of 3-4 June 1989 reflects a disappointing sense of defensiveness and self-absorption at the top of the world’s most populous and rapidly developing country.

Over the past week, as campaigners for civil rights and free speech around the world prepared to remember those killed or injured in Beijing that night, the Chinese authorities were detaining known dissidents, restricting access to Tiananmen Square, and shutting down Internet websites and search engines. The persecution of those involved in, or believed to have been in sympathy with, the Tiananmen protests goes on.

There remain many questions about the crushing of the protest, not least how many people lost their lives that night, and in what circumstances. The Beijing authorities insist that no more than 250 people died, and that no one was killed actually in the square itself — important, as Chinese regard the square as sacrosanct. For many, these claims are hard to believe. Even if strictly speaking true, however, this does not alter the fact that the Chinese Communist Party applied the might of the country’s military against peaceful protests — more than two million people were in Beijing’s streets at the movement's height — and, as is now clear, snuffed out the incipient flame of democracy for at least a generation.

China is richer, more developed and with more global clout than 20 years ago. But as a democracy, it is little further forward.