US ambassador to UN points to turbulent time in Middle East

WASHINGTON — The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, says it’s a time of dramatic change in the Mideast region and that the US understands that when democracy starts to take root, that may lead to turbulence in the short term.

She told CNN’s “State of the Union” that just as people across the Mideast no longer will allow their lives “to be hijacked by a dictator, they’re not going to allow extremist mobs to hijack their future and their freedom.”

Rice said the US is working closely with governments around the world to make sure that US diplomats and American facilities are protected.

She said President Barack Obama has been “incredibly calm, incredibly steady, and incredibly measured” in his handling of the anti-US protests in the Muslim world, a top official said Sunday.

“What we’ve seen is that the president has been incredibly calm, incredibly steady, and incredibly measured in his approach to this set of developments,” Rice told ABC’s “This Week” program.

“His interventions, his leadership, has ensured that in Egypt, in Yemen, in Tunisia, in Libya, and many other parts of the world, that leaders have come out and made very plain that there’s no excuse for this violence.”

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney urged a tough line Saturday on Egypt amid deadly anti-US violence in the region, as his election running mate Paul Ryan called for greater “moral clarity” in Obama’s foreign policy.

Romney toned down his rhetoric Thursday after several negative headlines and complaints from within his own party that he had made an ill-timed mischaracterization of Obama’s handling of rapidly escalating events.

But Friday Romney’s pick for vice president, Ryan, led a withering attack on Obama’s foreign policy, accusing it of diminishing America’s global standing and of emboldening extremists.

“Peace, freedom, and civilized values have enemies in this world, as we have been reminded by events in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen,” Ryan told the conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington.

Rice hit back at claims the administration was “impotent” and insisted that the demonstrations involved only a small number of people and that the United States was still broadly popular in the Muslim world. – Agencies