By Anne C. Mulkern
Denver Post Staff Writer
Denver Post Staff Writer
The U.S. needs to support Palestine as much as it supports Israel if America wants to ease tensions between the Arab and Western worlds, U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar said today as he visited the Middle East.
“There has to be an equality of treatment there,” Salazar, a Democrat from Colorado , said in a conference call with reporters.
Much of the violence from terrorists and others in the region is done in the name of Palestine, he said, and some Arab leaders believe that the U.S. favors Israel over Palestine in the long conflict between the two.
Along with Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Thad Cochran, R-Miss., Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., Benjamin Cardin D-Md., and Rep. Peter Welch D-Vt., Salazar this week visited Israel and Jordan, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Jordanian King Abdullah. He was headed to Beirut and Lebanon
Arab leaders want the U.S. to assist with diplomatic negotiations and with the economic reconstruction of Palestinian territories, Salazar said. There is an urgency for the U.S. to help, he said, because the area in and around Lebanon is a “powder keg,” that could explode this summer.
Salazar went to the region hoping to visit Iraq but was unable to do so, because there are a limited number of slots for members of Congress to enter the violence-torn country. The “logistics became a nightmare,’ he said.
Asked about a level of violence that kept him from immediately visiting the country, Salazar said that Iraq’s new government needs to take responsibility for securing peace in the region.
Salazar would not say at what point he would vote to cut off funding for the war, the biggest tool Congress has to force President Bush to pull troops out of Iraq.
The state’s junior senator said he told Arab leaders they need to help end sectarian violence in Iraq and that many of the leaders of the sectarian groups “would listen to some of their neighbors in the Arab world,” Salazar said.
“Their failure to get significantly more involved is going to endanger their own strategic interests,” he said.
