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| Middle East |
| Bush: 'I've never had respect for Arafat' |
| 2002-05-23 |
| US President George W. Bush says he has never had respect for Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, because he has failed to lead his people adequately. "He's had a chance to lead. He had a chance to get a peace agreement with my predecessor. He's had chance after chance. And by failing to lead, he has really let the Palestinians down," Bush told reporters before leaving for Germany, the first stop on a tour of European capitals and Russia. "I say that with a lot of angst in my heart, because I am concerned about the plight of the Palestinian citizenry, poor and isolated and frustrated. Somebody said, has he earned your respect? I said, he never had my respect, because he let his people down. The role of a leader is to lead." This is not the first time he's said this. It's why he's trying to build some sort of bypass to Yasser and his closest Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a senior aide to Arafat, dismissed Bush's criticism as unhelpful and "unfair." "These remarks do not help the situation," he told Reuters. "They provide a cover for Israeli crimes and aggression." Ahmed? I think that sort of shift-the-blame nonsense is what Bush is talking about... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |