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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Historic handshake: Barak meets Iraq's president in Athens |
| 2008-07-03 |
| Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday had a brief meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at a conference in Greece. The two shook hands when introduced by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during the 23rd congress of the Socialist International at the Lagonissi Grand Resort, about 40 kilometers south of Athens. Abbas and Barak met on the sidelines of the conference. The agenda of the talks has not been announced, and neither made any statement entering the meeting hall Tuesday. Abbas said his government would work to keep alive a June 19 truce between Israel and the militant Islamic group Hamas. "Israel will live in an island and sea of peace if Israel withdraws from Arab and Palestinian territories," Abbas told the conference. "We witness some steps in this direction which may stop this violence and bloodshed... Now there has been an agreement and we hope it will be kept. We want to keep this truce going." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 i forgot the consie meme, "OMG! Theyre SOCIALISTS!" Labour is divided. Many of the guys who moved over to Kadima were among the more firmly neoliberal ones. Peretz, the Labour leader before Barak, was seen as more "left". But that didnt mean renationalizing privatized companies, it meant more funding for social services which were cut under the old Likud govt when Bibi was finance minister. Barak is more concerned about security issues, IIUC, than about economics. I dont see that the Israeli Labour Party is really out of place in a Socialist International that includes the UK Labour party, or the German SPD, none of which are eager to abolish the marketplace. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2008-07-03 13:14 |
| #2 In other news, both Barak and Talabani were present at a meeting of the Socialist International. That's pretty depressing. Does Labor still consider itself a socialist party? I had gotten the impression that they had slipped onto the neoliberal side of the fence. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2008-07-03 10:05 |
| #1 old antiwar meme: The "new" Iraqi "government" is maintaining the boycott of Israel - Bush overthrew Saddam for the benefit of Iran, and the neocon dreams of an Iraq friendly to the US and Israel were foolishness, the ideas of idiots who didnt understand the reason, and they actually harmed Israel new (but even older) antiwar meme - This shows that 4000 Americans died for the security of Israel, the Jewish Neocons (thanks Joe Klein) put Israels interests ahead of America's, the Bush admin has submitted to the "Lobby" |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2008-07-03 09:24 |