Obama: We can't talk forever

WASHINGTON - America wants to see actions: The US administration hopes to see Israeli-Palestinian goodwill gestures within months, President Barack Obama said Tuesday following his meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah.

"My hope would be that over the next several months you start seeing gestures of good faith on all sides… think that the parties in the region probably have a pretty good recognition of what intermediate steps could be taken as confidence-building measures," he said. "We will be doing everything we can to encourage those confidence-building measures to take place."

"We can't talk forever; at some point, steps have to be taken, so that people can see progress on the ground," the president said.

Obama reiterated his support for the two-state solution, saying that "there are a lot of Israelis who also believe in a two-state solution."

"Unfortunately right now what we've seen, not just in Israel but within the Palestinian territories, among the Arab states, worldwide, is a profound cynicism about the possibility of any progress being made whatsoever," he said.

However, the president said the "United States is going to deeply engage in this process to see if we can make progress."

Addressing a question about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's latest remarks in Geneva, Obama said: "Sadly, the rhetoric is not new. This is the kind of rhetoric that we have come to expect from President Ahmadinejad."

"When I said during the course of the campaign and repeated after the election that we were serious about engagement with Iran, it was with no illusions," the president said. "I was very clear that I found many of the statements that President Ahmadinejad made, particularly those directed at Israel, to be appalling and objectionable."