Obama: 'America is changing'
Updated on 03 April 2009
US President Barack Obama tells a town hall meeting in Strasbourg that "America is changing, but it cannot be America alone that changes."
The President travelled to Strasbourg for a summit co-hosted by Germany and France to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Nato military alliance.
In his opening comments to the meeting with young people at the Rhenus sporthall, Barack Obama said: "We have arrived at a moment where each nation and every citizen must choose at last how we respond to a world that has grown smaller and more connected than at any time in its existence.
"The same forces that have brought us closer together have also given rise to new dangers that threaten to tear our world apart - dangers that cannot be contained by the nearest boarder or the furthest ocean."
On nuclear weapons, he said:
"This weekend in Prague I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons."
He said the economic crisis "has proven the fact of our interdependence in the most visible way yet.
"The United States shares blame for what has happened, but every nation shares responsibility for what lies ahead."
On the relationship between America and Europe, Obama said:
"In America there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there has been time when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive.
"But in Europe there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious.
"On both sides of the Atlantic these attitudes have become all too common.
"They fail to acknowledge the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.
"America is changing, but it cannot be America alone that changes."
On the war in Afghanistan, the president said:
"As we restore our common prosperity, we must stand up for our common security.
"Understand we would not deploy our own troops if this mission was not indispensible to our common security.
"I understand that there is doubt about this war in Europe, there is doubt at times even in the United States, but know this, the United States of America did not choose to fight a war in Afghanistan. We were attacked by an al-Qaida network that killed thousands on American soil.
"Along the boarder of Afghanistan and Pakistan those terrorists are still plotting today and if there is another al-Qaida attack it is just as likely, if not more, that it will be here in Europe.
"So I have made a commitment to Afghanistan and I have asked our Nato partners for more civilian and military support and assistance.
"We do this with a clear purpose - to root out the terrorists who threaten all of us, to train the Afghan people to sustain their own security and to help them advance their own opportunity and to quicken the day when our troops come home.
"We have no interest in occupying Afghanistan. We have more than enough to do in rebuilding America, but this is a mission that tests whether nations can come together in common purpose on behalf of our common security."
