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BY DAVID EDWARDS AND MURIEL KANE
Published: June 5, 2009
Updated 2 days ago
Rawstory
President Obama insisted during his speech in Cairo on Thursday that “America will align our policies with those who pursue peace — and we will say in public what we say in private, to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs.”
Obama’s remarks appear to constitute a repudiation of what has been described as a secret understanding between the Bush administration and Israeli officials that allowed them to continue expanding settlements in Palestinian territory even after the 2003 roadmap for peace called for a freeze on all settlement activity.
Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, is prepared to back up the claim that the Bush administration was saying different things to different parties during the roadmap negotiations.
“There were certainly at least two very different voices coming out of the Bush administration,” Wilkerson told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Thursday. “One was the voice of Colin Powell … and the other was Dick Cheney and George Bush. … They would give [the Israelis] assurances and so forth that would undercut what Powell was trying to do. We used to say in the State Department that Powell crawled out on a limb every time he went to the Middle East — and Cheney was there eagerly sawing the root of that limb off.”
Wilkerson praised Obama for his “essential” affirmation that he will speak with one voice to all the parties involved, but he added that it is also “essential that he follow up on it with actions.”And here is the rest of it. For more at Rawstory click here.
View Wilkerson interview with Keith Olbermann on Countdown, June 4, 2009
