WASHINGTON, Jan 11: US President-elect Barack Obama vowed to take swift action on the Middle East peace process and Iran’s nuclear ambitions but played for time to shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

In an interview with ABC, Mr Obama defended his reluctance to speak out on Israel’s bloody offensive in the Gaza Strip before he succeeds President George W. Bush on Jan 20.

But while he promised rapid efforts on the peace process and diplomatic engagement with Iran, Mr Obama said it would be a “challenge” to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in his first 100 days in office.

He said he was building a diplomatic team so that “on day one, we have the best possible people who are going to be immediately engaged in the Middle East peace process as a whole”. The team would “be engaging with all of the actors there” so that “both Israelis and Palestinians can meet their aspirations,” he said.

He said again that he would leave the Bush administration to speak on foreign policy until then, but indicated some continuity to the peace process.

“I think that if you look not just at the Bush administration, but also what happened under the (Bill) Clinton administration, you are seeing the general outlines of an approach.”

Asked about Arab criticism of his relative silence on the bloodshed, Mr Obama said: “When you see civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli, harmed, under hardship, it’s heartbreaking, and obviously what that does is it makes me much more determined to try to break a deadlock that has gone on for decades now.”

He stood by his words of July, during a visit to Israel, when he had said: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” Asked by ABC if he would repeat the remark now, he said: “I think that’s a basic principle of any country that they’ve got to protect their citizens.”