November 08, 2008	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 9, 1429

WASHINGTON, Nov 7: US President-elect Barack Obama indicated on Friday that his approach to the Muslim world will be different from that of the Bush administration, saying he would respond “appropriately” to a congratulatory letter from the Iranian leader.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent him a letter earlier this week, saying that he hoped the new US government “can distance itself from present statesmen’s wrong approaches”. This was seen in Washington as a clear reference to President Bush.

Mr Ahmadinejad wrote: “We also want US intervention to be limited to its borders, especially in the Middle East. It is highly expected to reverse the unfair attitude towards restoring the rights of the Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghans.”

Asked at his first news conference since his election if he would respond to the letter, Mr Obama said: “We are reviewing the letter” and will respond appropriately.

He said that issues like America’s relations with Iran were sensitive and he was not prepared to respond to questions on such issues in “a knee-jerk fashion”.

Mr Obama, however, reiterated his earlier stance that the US could not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

When a reporter asked him if the intelligence briefing he had received on Thursday as president-elect, had forced him to change his views on any issue, he said he would “skip” that part of the question.

There were speculations in the US media that Mr Obama might have to change his election stance, particularly on his declaration of targeting alleged terrorist hideouts inside Pakistan, after getting information about the ground situation from his intelligence team.

Mr Obama also showed respect to his predecessor at the White House, George W. Bush, saying that he was going to meet him on Monday “with a spirit of bipartisanship”.

Mr Obama also refused to be forced into declaring the team he is setting up to run the next US administration and said that it could takes weeks, and not days as some media reports had speculated.

Although Mr Obama began his third day as president-elect with a host of bad news about the US economy, he did not seem nervous.

He showed that he was not going to be pushed into taking action and that he was going to announce a stimulus package to revive the economy when the time comes to do so.

Mr Obama also emphasised that till January Mr Bush was the president of the country and he would take all major decisions.

However, he noted that statistics released on Friday showed that America had lost 1.2 million jobs this year and there were 10 million jobless people in the country.

Mr Obama said that his plans for rescuing the US economy would cater to the middle class, focussing on creating jobs and providing tax breaks to them. He also promised to revive the ailing US auto industry.