Pakistanis see a start, await action

Posing for pictures with friends in front of the gleaming white minarets of one of the world’s largest mosques, Khalid Mehmood said President Obama’s message to the Muslim world was a step in the right direction -- but only the first step.

The true test, the Islamabad marketing consultant said, will come when it is time to transform eloquence at the podium into policy.

“Since he has become president, there have been high hopes that he would be good for the Muslim world,” Mehmood said. “But this is just a speech. Now we need to see what he actually is going to do.”

That careful optimism was echoed by many Pakistanis Thursday. For a country nervously coming to grips with Islamic militancy, Obama struck a chord with a call to fight extremism without using it to define the Muslim world.

Still, many Pakistanis say the U.S. will not rebuild its credibility until it stops its airstrikes on suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban hide-outs in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. If there was a glaring hole in Obama’s speech, Pakistanis said, it was the omission of any mention of the drone attacks that needlessly kill civilians and violate the country’s sovereignty.

“The drone attacks should have been addressed in this speech,” said Aneela Riazuddin, 39, an editor at Online News Agency in Islamabad. “They should stop with this hostility that was started in the Bush era. Unless the drone attacks are stopped, the anti-American sentiment here won’t disappear.”

-- Alex Rodriguez