Media Reaction: Middle East and the Inauguration

UNCLAS SAO PAULO 000035 SIPDIS STATE INR/R/MR; IIP/R/MR; WHA/PD DEPT PASS USTR USDOC 4322/MAC/OLAC/JAFEE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KMDR OPRC OIIP XM XR XF BR SUBJECT: Media Reaction: Middle East and the Inauguration Title: A Pause for Obama Main Editorial in center-right O Estado de S. Paulo (1-20) states: [Israel's] cease-fire was a result of an American demand, transmitted emphatically to all parties, for the assembly of a present peace around the first days of Obama in the White House.... Both parts voice their victory....Nevertheless, there are signs that the Hamas has preserved itself....'the world understands today that Hamas is the only address in Gaza', says an Israeli political scientist, '- a piece of data which is an intolerable reality to Israel". Media Reaction Topic: Presidential Inauguration/new administration Foreign Policy Title: Obama's policy for energy Editorial in center-right O Estado de S. Paulo (1-20) by Jose Goldemberg: "U.S. extraordinary material progress is based on the consumption of those [coal, oil and natural gas] fuels, whose trade moves around at US$ 2 trillion per year....It is not surprising, then, that any attempt to reduce fossil fuel consumption finds so much resistance in the U.S....The new American government should substantially change [Bush's administration] policies, as indicated with the nomination of the new energy secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics (1997) and a professor at the University of California. [Among his opinions are:]....[1] using energy in a more efficient way....[2] increasing the production of renewable sources of energy that have already been developed.... and the possibilities of cooperation between U.S. and Brazil are good in that area....and [3] developing new technologies until they become competitive in the market." Media Reaction Topic: Presidential Inauguration/New Administration Foreign Policy Title: Obama's Promise Column in liberal Folha de S.Paulo (1-20) says: "Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th U.S. president constitutes an historic event whose magnitude cannot be attenuated. Not only a black politician reaches the post to govern the most powerful country in the world - an unedited fact to attest to the vitality of that democracy - as he [Obama] does it surrounded by a breeze of optimism that contrasts frontally with the panorama around him....The atmosphere of confidence and hope that surrounds Obama at his inauguration gives him an unusual grace period. Nonetheless, the size and the multiplicity of the challenges that awaits him, however, accumulate the potential of eroding them rapidly. WHITE