CAIRO, May 23: US first lady Laura Bush said on Monday she was not surprised at protests by Jews and Muslims during her weekend visit to Jerusalem’s holy sites, but appealed to both groups to put aside their anger.
Mrs Bush said protesters’ jostling and haranguing in the walled Old City on Sunday had not undermined her solo tour, aimed at countering anti-American sentiment. “These are very, very emotional places. They’re sacred places to religions,” Mrs Bush said in a CBS “Early Show” interview.
She told CNN she had spoken to her husband President George W. Bush about the incident, which she said was being exaggerated.
Mrs Bush began her Middle East trip on Friday acknowledging that the United States’ image in the Muslim world had been badly damaged by the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq and the Newsweek report, since retracted, that US interrogators had desecrated the Holy Quran.
The first lady said she deplored any abuses. She told ABC’s “Good Morning America”: “That’s not really what happens all the time. That’s not what our troops really do. This is a handful of people.”
Asked if her trip had helped placate Muslims, Mrs Bush said: “Well I hope so. You know, who knows. I mean I don’t know.”
PROTESTS NO SURPRISE: Speaking earlier in the mostly Arab Israeli village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem, Mrs Bush said the Old City protests had not been unexpected. “Everyone knows how high the tensions are and believe me, I was very, very welcomed by most people,” she said.
She wrapped up her Holy Land trip in Abu Ghosh with an appeal for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the aim of the diplomatic “road map” sponsored by her husband, which has been stalled by non-compliance and regular violence.
“There are thousands of years of fighting and hatred, but what I’m hoping is ... that it can be our generation that puts that aside so that we can all come to the Holy Land in peace,” she told reporters in the gardens of the 12th-century Church of the Resurrection.—Reuters
