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JERUSALEM, May 14: US President George Bush backed Lebanon’s government and Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts at the start of a Middle East visit on Wednesday in which he praised Israel at 60 as a model for regional democracy.
Mr Bush, in Jerusalem to celebrate the anniversary of Israel’s founding in 1948, accused Iran of meddling in Lebanon’s affairs.
He also said Washington would stand with Israel against the“existential threat” a nuclear-armed Iran would pose.
Taking no questions after meeting scandal-hit Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mr Bush gave no assessment in remarks to reporters of the chances of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal before he leaves the White House in January.
Without mentioning statehood negotiations that have shown little sign of progress, Bush said the United States would continue to support Palestinians “who don’t share” the vision of Hamas Islamists opposed to the peace efforts. In the latest setback to an agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Olmert has been hit by calls to resign over suspicions he took bribes from a US businessman.
Although Olmert has denied wrongdoing, he has pledged to resign if indicted, which could lead to a snap election certain to delay a peace deal. Bush will not visit the Palestinian territories during his three-day visit, but planned to meet Mr Abbas in Egypt on Saturday.
After his talks with Mr Olmert, Bush reserved some of his strongest comments for the situation in Lebanon, where the Hezbollah movement briefly took over parts of Beirut in fighting that erupted last week.
“This is an Iranian effort to destabilise (Lebanon’s) young democracy,” Bush said, voicing support for Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.
While Mr Bush and Mr Olmert met in Jerusalem, a rocket fired from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip struck a shopping mall in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, and wounded several people.Egypt has been trying to broker a truce between Israel and Hamas. But Olmert, speaking with Bush at his side, warned Gaza militants they must halt attacks or risk Israeli military action on a hitherto unseen scale.
Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, said in the Gaza Strip: “There is no welcome for Bush in the Holy Land. There is no welcome for hypocrite presidents who are defiling our land.”
DEMOCRACY: Bush, who was accompanied to the Middle East by his wife, Laura, started his visit to Jerusalem by meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres, a Nobel peace prize laureate.
Washington, Bush said, “would continue to work toward a vision of where people who are just and reasonable and want a chance to live at peace with Israel have that opportunity.”
Speaking to reporters in the garden of Israel’s presidential residence, Bush described Israel as the “only true democracy” in the Middle East, calling it “a prosperous, hopeful land” whose achievements could serve as an example for the region.
While Israel celebrates its 60th anniversary, Palestinians are marking their “Nakba”, or “catastrophe” this week. The Nakba refers to the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948.
Olmert, fighting for his political survival, said on Tuesday he and Abbas had reached understanding and points of agreement on some issues of a statehood deal. He did not elaborate.
With the clock ticking on his administration, Bush, on his second visit to Israel this year, is trying to salvage a foreign policy legacy encompassing more than the unpopular war in Iraq.
Israeli-Palestinian talks have faltered over Israeli settlement expansion plans in the occupied W. Bank and violence in and around the Gaza Strip. Egyptian mediators hope to halt that violence in talks on a truce between Israel and Hamas.
—Reuters
