US first lady Laura Bush said yesterday she was not surprised to be met by protesters during her tour of Mideast holy sites and pledged the US will do all it can to help resolve age-old conflicts.
"As we all know, this is a place of very high tensions and high emotions," the first lady said while standing in the garden courtyard of the Church of the Resurrection. "And you can understand why when you see the people with a deep and sincere faith in their religion all living side by side."
Bush said the protesters who heckled her during Sunday's visits to the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall did not surprise her and she denied that they overshadowed her goodwill visit.
PHOTO: EPA
"I think the protests were very expected. If you didn't expect them, you didn't know what it would be like when you got here," she said. "Everyone knows how the tensions are and, believe me, I was very, very welcomed by most people."
Bush was visiting sites sacred to all three major religions born in the region, winding up with a stop yesterday at the Church of the Resurrection at Abu Ghosh, a predominantly Muslim town where some believe Jesus appeared on Easter.
"I think that Abu Ghosh, as we leave Israel, can show us what it's like when the people of three religions that have so many holy sites here in the Holy Land indeed can live in peace with each other," she said. The first lady was heading to Cairo later.
As Bush toured the 12th-century church, nuns and monks sang Psalm 150 in Hebrew as a symbol of the religious cultures coexisting in the region.
The peaceful visit was in contrast to her stops Sunday at sites sacred to Muslims and Jews.
At the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine, protesters demanded that the US release Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish American imprisoned for spying for Israel. During a visit to the Dome of the Rock, she faced heckling from angry Palestinians. One man yelled, "How dare you come in here! Why your husband kill Muslim?"
Bush's five-day visit to the Middle East, which also included stops in Jordan and Egypt, was intended partly to help defuse anti-American sentiment in the region. Strains have arisen because of the US-led war in Iraq and allegations that American interrogators have mistreated Muslim prisoners.
Some visitors that Bush encountered near the Dome of the Rock, a mosque on a hilltop compound known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif and to Jews as Temple Mount, shouted at her in Arabic. "None of you belong in here!" one man yelled as Bush and her entourage arrived.
Bush removed her shoes as she entered the mosque and walked barefoot on the red carpet. She held a black scarf tightly around her head as she gazed up at the gilded dome and the colorful mosaics.
As she left, visitors and media grew so aggressive that Israeli police locked arms to form a human chain to block people getting too close. US Secret Service agents packed tightly around her.
Pollard's supporters also held up signs outside the residence of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, where Bush had tea with his wife, Gila Katsav, and other Israeli women.
No protesters were evident when Bush had lunch with leading Palestinian women at a hotel in Jericho, a town that Israel recently turned over to Palestinian control, or when she visited the ruins of an eighth-century palace in the West Bank town of Jericho and appealed for peace.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS