Italy's foreign minister thanks Obama for speech on Israel

(ANSA) - Milan, May 20 - Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini openly "thanked" United States President Barack Obama for his effort to capture the moment of deep political change in North Africa and the Mideast by calling for renewed peace negotiations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Frattini declared it "a perspective that Italy shares" at a ceremony for the 60th anniversary of the NATO Defense College in Rome, which was attended also by Italy's president Giorgio Napolitano, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Italian Defense Minister Ignazio La Russa.

"The wind that blows from North Africa and toward the Mideast deserves our convinced support," Frattini added.

On Thursday, the day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to arrive for an official visit in Washington D.C., Obama made a 45-minute speech proposing the use of borders predating the 1967 Arab Israeli war and a non-militarized Palestinian State as starting points for new efforts to break the stalemate in the region's most obstinate conflict.

Obama's new appeal came toward the end of an address seeking to explain the US response to the disparate events of the Arab Spring, and immediately raised hackles in both Israeli and Palestinian camps.

Netanyahu said he appreciated the US president's effort, but that Israel would not consider withdrawal to pre-1967 borders.

Netanyahu reportedly had held an angry phone call with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton prior to Obama's speech demanding removal of any reference to pre-1967 borders, wrote the New York Times.

Hamas - the Islamist political party that rules the Gaza Strip - dismissed the speech as pro-Israeli, and Palestinian newspapers criticized Obama's lack of support for a Palestinian appeal to the United Nations for recognition as an independent state.

Palestinian newspapers also reported that Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian National Authority, is holding a series of consultations with high officials in Arab countries to define an adequate response to Obama's declarations.