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WASHINGTON, June 19: The White House on Wednesday condemned the suicide bombing in occupied Al Quds and said its immediate aftermath was not the right time for President George W. Bush to lay out his ideas on Middle East peace.
“It’s obvious that the immediate aftermath is not the right time,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said when asked about when Bush would give a Middle East speech that was expected this week. “The president knows what he wants to say. The president will share it when ... it can do the most good.”
The spokesman added, “I think the time will be soon ... It’s hard to get people to focus on peace today when they’re still suffering from the consequences of terrorism as we speak.”
But a well-informed Israeli source said “there is strong pressure not to deliver it (the speech) at all”.
The source said the Americans started to have misgivings a few days ago but doubts were heightened after Tuesday’s bombing.
The source said the debate had sharpened between US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who favours a peace initiative, and hardliners such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
A US official confirmed the rumblings within the administration but doubted Bush would scrap his remarks altogether.
“They have trumpeted this speech so much it wouldn’t look good if he didn’t give it,” the official said. Washington had planned to follow up the address with a trip by Powell to the Middle East.
CONDEMNATION: The White House also said that Bush believes Palestinian President Yasser Arafat must do more to stop attacks like the suicide bombings that killed 26 Israelis in two days.
“The president condemns this latest attack,” Fleischer told reporters at his daily briefing. “The president is determined still to find a way to help the parties to find peace.”
“Whatever the source of the attacks, the president thinks that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority can do more to stop them,” Fleischer added. “They need to do more, they should do more and they should want to do more.”
MEDIA CAMPAIGN: Arab information ministers met here on Wednesday to discuss the launch of a 20-million-dollar media campaign against Israel, which also seeks to ban Arab TV interviews with Israeli officials.
Ministers from 13 Arab states — Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen — took part in the one-day meeting at the Cairo headquarters of the 22-member Arab League.
The other members of the organisation were represented by lower ranking information officials, and Qatar did not attend because it has abolished its information ministry.
The meeting, chaired by Syrian Information Minister Adnan Omran, discussed a project “calling on Arab states to launch a media campaign” against Israel, “addressed to international public opinion,” at a cost of 20 million dollars.
Under the project, the campaign will counteract “Israeli and US attempts to portray the Palestinian national struggle as unjustified terrorism.”
The draft also calls on “Arab media not to allow Israeli officials to address Arab public opinion in their attempt to justify aggression.”
This resolution appeared to target Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite channel. Qatar has so far refused to force Al-Jazeera not to air the comments of Israeli officials on the Middle East conflict.
In a speech, Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said that “not one dollar” has been committed so far to kick start the plan, although it has been on the table for around one year.
Aridi blamed “inter-Arab differences” and said some Arab states, which he did not name, “preferred to act outside the Arab League” framework.
His comments drew a reaction from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, with Saudi Information Minister Fuad al-Farsi saying the kingdom was “ready to contribute 3.36 million dollars, provided the other Arab countries also allocate funds.”
Egyptian Information Minister Safwat al-Sherif said the Arab states “need to unify and organise their efforts before gathering the funds.”—Reuters\AFP
