Obama monitors Israeli attacks on Gaza

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-29 16:23

WASHINGTON -- A top adviser to Barack Obama said the US president-elect is monitoring Israel's intense air offensive against Gaza rocket squads and Hamas members but declined comment on the fresh Mideast crisis, deferring to the Bush administration.

David Axelrod said Obama, vacationing in Hawaii, was in contact with President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice but that comment from him was not appropriate. More than 290 Palestinians have died in the first two days of the air campaign.

"President Bush speaks for the United States until January 20 and we're going to honor that," Axelrod said Sunday.

Axelrod, a top presidential campaign official who is moving into Obama's White House inner circle, acknowledged that the United States has had a "special relationship" with Israel, calling it an "important bond, an important relationship."

Obama is "going to work closely with the Israelis. They're a great ally of ours, the most important ally in the region," Axelrod said. "And that is a fundamental principle from which he'll work. But he will do so in a way that will promote the cause of peace, and work closely with the Israelis and the Palestinians on that."

Obama is receiving regular security briefings during his Hawaii holiday with his wife and two daughters. Sunday morning he again traveled to a Marine Corps base near his vacation home for an hourlong workout. Obama, his wife and two daughters are spending 12 days in Obama's native state. He has no public schedule through the New Year.

Axelrod, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS' "Face the Nation," also defended plans for a conservative, anti-gay rights preacher to deliver the inaugural invocation. He said the invitation to the Rev. Rick Warren was important because it underlined the inclusiveness he wants to institute in his administration.

"The important point here is you have a conservative evangelical pastor coming to take part in the inauguration of a progressive president," Axelrod said of Warren, a prominent preacher who backed a recent ballot measure banning same-sex marriage in his home state of California.

Warren has compared gay marriage to legitimizing incest, child abuse and polygamy. That stance has sparked outrage among gays and the president-elect's liberal backers.

At the same time, Warren has battled complaints from fellow evangelicals that he isn't nearly conservative enough. He has spoken out against the use of torture to combat terrorism and has joined the fight against global warming. Encouraged by his wife, he has also put his prestige and money behind helping people with AIDS.

More importantly for the much wider scope of Americans, however, is the terrible economic situation in the United States and globally.

Obama won the US presidential election, in part, through voters' belief that he was better able than Republican John McCain to deal with the economic meltdown. Part of his campaign pledge was a tax cut for middle- and low-income earners while increasing the federal levy on wealthier Americans.

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