US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that Cairo is neither an ally nor an enemy of Washington.

US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that Cairo is neither an ally nor an enemy of Washington.

In the wake of a protest at the US embassy in Cairo over a film deemed to deemed offensive to the Prophet Mohammad (pbuh), which was produced by extremist Copts resident in the US, Obama made his remarks.

"I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy," Obama said in excerpts of an interview with Telemundo aired by MSNBC.
"I think that we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident," Obama said.

"Certainly in this situation, what we're going to expect is that they are responsive to our insistence that our embassy is protected, our personnel is protected," Obama said.

"And if they take actions that indicate they're not taking those responsibilities, as all other countries do where we have embassies, I think that's going to be a real big problem."

Calling it a "work in progress," Obama said the new government was "trying to find its way" and noted it was democratically elected.