Hopes for Obama's trip

US President Barack Obama kicked off a three-day trip to the Middle East on Tuesday. However, the outside world has little expectation that his trip will bear any significant results.

As a country wielding special influence in a region that is afflicted with such woes as the crisis in Syria, the Iranian nuclear standoff and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United States should send positive signals so these knotty issues can be resolved in peace.

Obama's first trip to the region in his second presidential term will take him to Israel, the Palestinian West Bank and Jordan. As he has ruled out either presenting a new Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative or pressing Israel to freeze Jewish settlement construction in the occupied territories, those who have pinned their hopes on him providing the impetus to restart the Middle East peace process are naturally going to be disappointed.