President Barack Obama is to deliver in Egypt early next month his long-anticipated appeal for reconciliation between the Muslim world and the west after more than a decade of growing tension and violence.
On a trip that will be fraught with security concerns, Obama opted to go to Cairo, which the White House described as "the heart of the Arab world" but which is also the birthplace of modern jihadist movements.
The speech will be the high point so far of a policy pursued by Obama since taking over the White House of reaching out to the Muslim world, in contrast with the polarising approach previously adopted by former president George Bush.
Obama had planned to make the trip during his first 100 days in office but finding a suitable capital and site proved more problematic than first anticipated, with various options looked at and discarded on security and diplomatic grounds before agreeing on the Egyptian capital.
The Cairo speech will build on a message he delivered to the Turkish parliament earlier this year that the US is not at war with Islam, that the concerns of most Muslims are the same as most Americans and that they have a joint interest in defeating extremist ideologies.
The White House press spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said: "All of this gives the president the opportunity, hopefully, to extend the hand to those that in many ways are like us but simply have a different religion."
Obama is scheduled to fly from Cairo to Germany, where the next day he is to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp complex - his great-uncle was among US troops who liberated one of the camps - and the day after visit France to commemorate the anniversary of the Normandy landings.
Gibbs said that Obama had no plans to visit any other country in the Middle East. It is unusual for a US president to be in the region and not include Israel on his itinerary.
The Obama administration is trying to tackle the many issues that have contributed to the rupture between the west and the Muslim world, of which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the biggest.
The trip will come shortly after visits to the White House scheduled for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
The White House, despairing of the Israelis and Palestinians reaching agreement by themselves, is preparing to present the two sides with the outlines of a plan.
His advisers also hope that the US pullout from Iraq will help in changing the perception of the US in the Muslim world, though the growing violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan could undermine these efforts.
Obama promised during the presidential election campaign that he would make a priority of the early part of his time in office to deliver a major speech in the capital of a Muslim country.
He never specified which one, though speculation had narrowed to Cairo and Jakarta, given that Obama had spent part of his childhood there.
Gibbs, asked today if Egypt was a bad location for such an important speech given its poor human rights record, said the scope of the speech was more important than the leadership of the country in which it was given.
He added the intention was not to try to attract a large crowd, as in Berlin last year, but to get the message out. He hastily added that though the speech was being given in the heart of the Arab world, it was aimed not just at Arabs but Muslims throughout the world.
Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, gave a major speech in Cairo in 2005 in which she lectured Egypt and Saudi Arabia over their poor human rights records and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, lack of democracy.
Obama shortly after taking office gave his first interview to an Arab television station, Al Arabiya, and he has since made a series of conciliatory gestures to the Muslim world.
As well as being the home of the ideologues who first promoted the idea of modern jihadism, Egypt has immense security problems, with several extremist groups active in trying to bring down Mubarak, who is perceived as being too close to the west.
The White House is also interested in trying to secure a peace agreement between Israel and Syria. Obama today signed an order renewing sanctions on Syria for "supporting terrorism, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programmes and undermining US and international efforts with respect to the stabilisaton and reconstruction of Iraq".
In spite of the harsh language, the White House remains hopeful of establishing a new relationship with Damascus.