AMMAN (AFP)
U.S. Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Tuesday that he supported Israel's claim to Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, flying in the face of the international community's stance.
"I support Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," McCain said in Jordan on the latest leg of a visit to the region.
Israel annexed east Jerusalem after seizing it in the Arab-Israeli war in June 1967 and declared it part of its eternal undivided capital, a claim not recognized by the world community.
The fate of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest issues in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and renewed Israeli settlement activity in the occupied eastern part is hampering peace talks that were revived only in November.
The Palestinians, who want to make the eastern part of the Holy City the capital of their future promised state, said McCain's statements contradicted the two-state solution to the decades-long Middle East conflict laid out by U.S. President George W. Bush.
"They do not represent the position of the U.S. administration which considers all the Palestinian areas occupied by Israel in 1967, including east Jerusalem as occupied territories," senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP in Ramallah.
"They also contradict the two-state vision of president Bush." |
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Peace process McCain, who is the Republican nominee for the November race for the White House, insisted that he supported the Middle East peace process.
"I am committed to pursuing the Israel-Palestinian peace process and make it a high priority," he told reporters after he toured the Roman Citadel site in downtown Amman.
"I think it will be enormously helpful if... Gaza is not governed by an entity that is committed the extinction of the state of Israel."
McCain was referring to Hamas, which has offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
McCain, who visited Baghdad and is to go on to Israel, also voiced concern at what he said was Iran's influence in Iraq and its support for the Lebanese Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. |
