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Friday, October 07, 2005
Some headlines and summaries from JTA
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Bush: Fight terrorism to protect Israel
America must fight terrorists because they could destroy Israel, President Bush said.
In a long address Thursday to the National Endowment on Democracy, Bush sought to explain a foreign policy that has become bogged down in the Iraq war. Bush cast Iraq as central to his war on terrorism and cited a litany of catastrophic outcomes should terrorists prevail, among them the destruction of Israel.
“With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people and to blackmail our government into isolation,” he said.
Bush: Syria, Iran must be held accountable
Regimes that harbor terrorists, including Syria’s and Iran’s, must be held to account, President Bush said.
“State sponsors like Syria and Iran have a long history of collaboration with terrorists and they deserve no patience from the victims of terror,” Bush said in a major foreign-policy address Thursday at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. “The United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who support and harbor them, because they’re equally guilty of murder. Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization, and the civilized world must hold those regimes to account.”
The United States says Syria continues to harbor Palestinian terrorist groups.
Asked to elaborate later, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said the United States could expand sanctions against Syria.
Palestinian state discussed
President Bush said he wants a Palestinian state that does not look like “Swiss cheese,” a senior Palestinian official said.
Rafiq Al-Husseini, chief of staff to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is in Washington this week to prepare for the Abbas-Bush summit Oct. 20.
Al-Husseini was surprised Wednesday by a last-minute invitation to meet with Bush and Karen Hughes, a close Bush adviser dealing with U.S. diplomacy in the Arab world. “We talked about what the Palestinians under President Mahmoud Abbas are trying to do and trying to achieve, what President Bush’s vision is all about, and what” Bush’s “commitment to the Palestinian cause is in terms of establishing a viable and contiguous Palestinian state,” Al-Husseini said afterward at a briefing at the Palestine Center, a Washington think tank. “He said he does not want a state that looks like ‘Swiss cheese’ — these were his words.”
Bush in the past has expressed concern that Israeli settlement in the West Bank could cantonize Palestinian areas and prevent the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state.
Bolton: UNRWA might disappear
The United States is considering a proposal to fold the main Palestinian relief organization into the broader U.N. refugee assistance arm, John Bolton said.
Testifying in Congress last week, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said the idea of folding the U.N. Relief and Works Agency into the U.N. High Commission for Refugees was under discussion. “I think it’s appropriate now that we’re beginning to think about what to do with UNRWA as we get to a two-state solution,” Bolton said. He cited the precedent of Cambodian refugees in Thailand who were served by the U.N. Board of Relief Organization; when the status of Cambodia was resolved in the early 1990s, refugees went back to Cambodia and UNBRO was abolished.
Israeli and pro-Israel groups complain that UNRWA acts as an advocate for the Palestinians instead of simply administering relief. UNRWA says it advocates for a standard of living and not a national cause.
http://jta.org
posted by Somebody @ 6:26 AM Permanent Link
 
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