LIKE many American presidents before him, Barack Obama never knowingly plays down his Irish roots.

US president Barack Obama told the Muslim nation that was his boyhood home that American relations with the Islamic world were still frayed, but urged all sides to look beyond “suspicion and mistrust” to forge common ground against terrorism.

“Our time has come, our movement is real and change is coming to America,” Barack Obama said as the race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination moves on from Super Tuesday.