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America in the Middle East

?The Bush administration is interfering?

Washington wants vote for Olmert in the coming Israeli elections


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
January 12, 2006

Despite assurances to the contrary given by a former US ambassador to Israel, the Bush administration has come out in strong support of Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Kadima Party two-and-a-half months before general elections are held in Israel.

Earlier this week, Martin Indyk told the Israeli news outlet Ynet that President George W. Bush ?would not dare interfere with the elections in Israel, like President Bill Clinton did during the 1996 elections.?

But according to a number of reports in the Israeli media Thursday, US President George W. Bush has decided to do what he can to try and ensure that Olmert, standing in for an incapacitated Ariel Sharon, is elected to be full-time prime minister when Israelis go to the polls on March 28.

Reports Thursday said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has invited Olmert to visit Washington DC, probably sometime next month.

And on Wednesday evening Bush called Olmert by telephone and told him that he intended to make sure the vision he and Sharon shared of Israel surrendering more land for the sake of ?peace? became a reality.

Olmert responded that if elected, he would be working side by side with the American to realize the birth of a Palestinian Arab state on the ancient Jewish lands of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Israeli parliamentarian Yitzhak Herzog, meanwhile, leveled a broadside at the Bush administration for, so he charged, improperly trying to influence the outcome of Israel?s elections.

?Aside from saying 'Go vote Sharon,' they did everything else,? Herzog was quoted as saying by The Associated Press.

?I suggest to our friends in the United States to understand that we are in an election campaign and not to interfere in the election process in Israel and to act carefully in this time,? the former housing minister from the leftist Labor Party said.

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