WASHINGTON, 29 June — Six US Muslim leaders were arrested outside the White House on Wednesday for staging a protest during Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s talks with President George W. Bush. Khalid Turaani, executive director of American Muslims for Jerusalem (AMJ), and five other men representing national Muslim organizations sat for 20 minutes in a security zone in front of the White House until the United States park police arrested them. Before the sit-in, participants issued a brief statement to the press, calling the meeting between Bush and Sharon immoral. “It is a crime to entertain war criminals with American taxpayers dollars,” they said.
The arrests coincided with a congressional warning to Palestinians. A key congressional panel passed a foreign aid bill that provides for stiff sanctions against the Palestine Liberation Organization if it fails to curb “anti-Israeli violence.”
The $15.2 billion bill, approved by the Subcommittee on Foreign Operation of the House of Representatives, contains language that requires the president to determine whether the PLO is complying with its promise to renounce violence and take measures against instigators of violence.
If the White House cannot make such a determination, it must either close the Palestinian information office in Washington, designate the PLO, or one of its constituent groups, as a terrorist organization, or limit humanitarian assistance to the West Bank and Gaza.
In a display of solidarity with the Jewish state, the subcommittee approved $2.04 billion in military assistance to it for fiscal 2002, which begins Oct. 1. The economic package for Egypt was whittled down by $40 million, to $655 million.
