World reacts to Obama's reelection

SYRIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL:  
A spokesman for the main Syrian opposition bloc, the Syrian National Council, expressed hope that the election victory would free Obama to do more to support those trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.
    
"We hope this victory for President Obama will make him free more to make the right decision to help freedom and dignity in Syria and all over the world," SNC spokesman George Sabra said on the sidelines of an opposition conference on the Qatari capital of Doha.
     
Sabra renewed the opposition's appeal to the international community to supply rebel fighters with weapons.
     
The Obama administration and its Western allies have ruled out military intervention in Syria. The U.S. has also been cool to opposition rebels' demands for weapons such as anti-aircraft missiles, out of concern that they could fall into the wrong hands. The U.S. and other foreign backers of the Syrian uprising have urged the fractured, largely exile-based opposition to unite and include more representatives from inside Syria.

RUSSIA:
Russian President Vladimir Putin's welcomes U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election and hopes it will have a positive impact on ties with the United States, his spokesman told Russian news agencies on Wednesday.
   
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said Moscow was ready to take cooperation with the U.S. government as far as Washington was willing to go.
   
"We will continue to work with this administration," Lavrov was quoted as saying by RIA news agency in an interview with a Russian newspaper. "We are ready, on the basis of mutual equality, mutual profit and mutual respect ... to go as far as the U.S. administration is willing to go."

CHINA:
China's Foreign Ministry said President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiaobao phoned Obama to congratulate him. Vice President Xi Jinping, who is to begin taking over this week in China's once-a-decade leadership transition, phoned Vice President Joe Biden to congratulate him.
    
British Prime Minister David Cameron posted his regards on Twitter: "Warm congratulations to my friend (at)BarackObama. Look forward to continuing to work together."
 
ISRAEL:   
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has had a strained relationship with the American president over his policies on Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, congratulated the president in a text message to reporters. "I will continue to work with President Obama to preserve the strategic interests of Israel's citizens," he said.
 
PA:     
The Western-backed Palestinian Authority has been disappointed that Obama did not pressure Israel to make greater efforts to make peace with the Palestinians, including a freeze on all settlement construction. In the absence of negotiations, senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat urged the U.S. president to reverse course and support Palestinian efforts to seek U.N. General Assembly recognition of an independent state of Palestine.

PAKISTAN:
Pakistan's president Asif Ali Zardari also relayed his congratulations for the reelection of US president Barack Obama.
 
JAPAN:    
For Obama, Japan, the president's re-election means more opportunity to capitalize on their shared name. Obama means "little beach" in Japanese.
     
The western coastal town threw a party as they watched the election returns. Hula dancers known as the Obama Girls swayed in homage of the president's home state of Hawaii, said Obama city hall official Hirokazu Yomo.
 
MYANMAR:     
In Myanmar, which is pushing political reforms forward after five decades of military rule kept it isolated from much of the rest of the world, some said they were relieved Obama was re-elected because he chosen to engage rather than sanction their country.

    
REUTERS/AP