WASHINGTON, Aug 7: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld kicked up a storm on Tuesday by referring to the “so-called occupied territories” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, apparently condoning the building of Jewish settlements in the territories.

In a speech at the pentagon, Rumsfeld said: “My feeling about the so-called occupied territories are that there was a war, Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and they lost a lost of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict.”

“In the intervening period, they’ve made some settlements in various parts of the so-called occupied area, which was the result of a war, which they won,” he said.

“The settlement issues — it’s hard to know whether they’re settlements in portions of the real estate that will end up with (a Palestinian entity) or Israel. So it seems to me focusing on settlements at the present time misses the point,” he said.

The defence secretary, regarded in the Middle East as one of the officials in the Bush administration who has pushed for the sidelining of Yasser Arafat, also sharply criticized the Palestinian leader’s government, accusing it of being involved in terrorism and of not being an “effective interlocutor” for peace with Israel.

In June, the United States reaffirmed its opposition to Israel’s continued efforts to build new settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, calling them “unhelpful.”

Egypt, a key broker in the Middle East peace process, on Wednesday played down the remarks.

“It has to be a slip of the tongue by the US defense secretary, as he was speaking spontaneously and not from a written speech,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters when asked about Rumsfeld’s “so-called occupied” remark.—AFP