WASHINGTON, 22 July 2006 — The White House yesterday stood by its response to the latest Middle East crisis, which has seen around 340 people in Lebanon and 33 Israelis killed since the start of an offensive launched by Israel after two of its soldiers were kidnapped.
Asked about criticism that the US response — including plans to send Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region next week — was too little, too late, White House spokesman Tony Snow told NBC television: “The critics have got it wrong. The United States has been very actively engaged on the diplomatic front ever since the beginning of this.” Snow said Rice has spoken “repeatedly” with the region’s officials and President George W. Bush has been talking to “leaders who are not only in the neighborhood but in the position to provide leverage and influence over the governments who are chiefly responsible for supporting Hezbollah — that would be Iran and Syria.
“Nobody’s been more diplomatically active than we have,” Snow told NBC.
In a separate interview with CNN television, Snow said “the United States understands that Hezbollah answers to Syria and Iran, and we have been putting pressure through the people that can assert it.
“We’re at a distance,” he said, noting that “the Saudis aren’t, the Turks aren’t (and) the Egyptians and Jordanians aren’t.”
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also yesterday expressed concern about the situation in the Middle East as she met in New York with a three-man UN mediation team just back from the region.
Rice, accompanied by US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch and US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, huddled for 45 minutes with the UN team composed of Vijay Nambiar, Alvaro de Soto and Terje Roed-Larsen at New York’s swank Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
“We are all very concerned about the situation in the Middle East and want to find a way forward that will contribute to a stable and democratic and peaceful Middle East,” Rice said at the beginning of the private meeting.
She thanked the UN team for going to the Middle East at UN chief Kofi Annan’s request on such a short notice and said she looked forward to hearing their report.
Neither Rice nor the UN team made any remarks as the meeting ended.
In another development, the US Senate on Thursday unanimously approved an extension of the landmark Voting Rights Act, sending the bill to President George W. Bush to be signed into law. The Senate voted 98 to 0 in favor of a 25-year renewal for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a cornerstone of US civil rights law, one week after it passed in the House of Representatives 390-33.
“I will be pleased to sign the Voting Rights Act into law, and I will continue to work with Congress to ensure that our country lives up to our guiding principle that all men and women are created equal,” Bush said in a statement.
