The United Nations tried to distance Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday from a top envoy's description of Israel as "the great poison" in the Middle East. Israel said it wasn't satisfied and is considering a formal protest.
Lakhdar Brahimi, in an interview Wednesday with France Inter radio, said Israel's policy toward the Palestinians — and U.S. support for it — was making it more difficult for him to help the Iraqis establish an interim government. "There's a lot of hatred because the very violent and repressive security policy of the Israeli government as well as this determination to occupy more and more Palestinian territory," said Brahimi, a U.N. undersecretary-general and Annan's top envoy on Iraq. Brahimi stressed that an eventual solution to Iraq was tied to the situation between the Israelis and Palestinians. "The problems are linked," he said. "There is no doubt that the great poison in the region is this Israeli policy of domination and the suffering imposed on the Palestinians as well as the perception of all of the population in the region, and beyond, of the injustice of this policy and the equally unjust support ... of the United States for this policy." At the U.N. briefing Friday, spokesman Fred Eckhard suggested that Brahimi's comments did not reflect the U.N. position toward Israel. The U.N. spokesman was pressed several times on whether the United Nations believes Israel is spreading "poison" in the region. "It's a politically complex issue," Eckhard said. "Mr. Brahimi was expressing his personal views. ... The secretary-general's views, as expressed over the last seven years, do not contain the word `poison.'"
| Same idea, though. Have they fired Brahimi yet? Didn't think so. |
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