RAMALLAH, West Bank: Former US president Jimmy Carter said on Tuesday he had wanted to visit the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on his current Middle East tour but that Israel 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, which control access to Gaza, did not immediately comment on the claim.
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 European Union.
Carter defended his decision to meet Meshaal, saying he hoped to help involve the movement in the current 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 s 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.
The former president and his wife Rosalynn Carter laid a wreath on the tomb of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah. The wreath bore the words: President and Mrs Carter.
The former president was nevertheless scheduled to attend a reception on Tuesday in which former deputy Palestinian prime minister and senior West Bank Hamas leader Nassereddin Al-Shaer would be present.
Carter said on Sunday that 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 apartheid. -AFP
