Former US President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that he
wanted to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on his current
Middle East tour Israel had refused to authorize the trip.
"I haven't been able to get a permission to go to Gaza. I
would like to. I asked for permission but I was turned
down," Carter told reporters in Ramallah ahead of a
meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Israeli authorities did not immediately comment.
Carter's nine-day sweep through the region has drawn
fire from the United States and Israel, which have
urged him not to go through with a planned
face-to-face meeting with exiled Hamas leader
Khaled Meshaal in Damascus.
The Islamist Hamas movement, which seized control of
Gaza in June after ousting security forces loyal to
moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,
is considered a terrorist organization by the United States,
Israel, and the E.U.
Carter defended his decision to meet Meshaal, saying he
hoped to help involve the movement in the current
Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
"I'm going to try everything I can to get him to agree to
a peaceful resolution of differences both with the Israelis
and with Fatah," he said, referring to Abbas' Fatah movement.
"But I'm not a negotiator, I'm just trying to understand
different options and communicate," he said. "If he has
anything constructive to say, he or the Syrian president,
then I would bring it to other people."
Carter and his wife Rosalynn laid a wreath at the tomb
of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.
The wreath bore the words: "President and Mrs. Carter."
Afterward, the former president met former deputy
Prime Minister and senior West Bank Hamas leader
Nassereddin al-Shaer at a reception.
Carter said on Sunday that most Israeli leaders had
declined to meet him on the tour which will also
take him to Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
The former US president won a Nobel Peace Prize
in 2002 and is considered to be the architect of the
1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty. But Carter ruffled
Israeli feathers with a 2006 book in which he
appeared to compare the occupation of the
West Bank with the racist policies of South
Africa during that country's Apartheid era. - AFP
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