Skip to main content

Powell: Close Gitmo and talk with Iran and others

Ouch! The Bush administration will be rapt when it reads the statements of its former Secretary of State made on the NBC "Meet the Press" program - as reported by m & c:

"Former Secretary of State Colin Powell recommends the United States engage in talks with Syria, Iran and other Middle East nations.

Speaking to Tim Russert on NBC`s 'Meet the Press,' Powell said such talks should no be to solve a particular problem or crisis du jour but to have a dialogue with the people involved in the region in many ways.

'And so I think it is shortsighted not to talk to Syria and Iran and everybody else in the region and not for the purpose of making a demand on them, and I`ll only talk to you if you meet the demand that I want to talk to you about,' he said.

Powell also said he would immediately shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba because it harms the way the world perceives America. He said he would have the detainees transferred to the federal legal system."

Read a fuller report, from Reuters, here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...

Wow!.....some "visitor" to Ferryland in Newfoundland