Ex-U.S. Diplomats Grill Bush On ‘Unqualified Israel Support’

"Your unqualified support of [Israeli Premier Ariel] Sharon’s extra-judicial assassinations, Israel’s Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories and now your endorsement of Sharon’s unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends," reads the letter, published in full by the Financial Times.

The diplomats, some of whom belong to the American Educational Trust (AET), plan to release the text at a press conference in Washington later Tuesday, May 4, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"Early responses are staggering," the AET said in a brief statement Monday, May 3, adding "signatories are united by their belief that the U.S. government is heading toward great danger."

"Our hope is that both political parties will take heed and listen to the voices of experienced diplomats," it said.

On Monday, April 26, British Prime Minister Tony Blair faced a withering and unprecedented criticism from the most senior former officials in the Foreign Office for toeing the U.S. line in the Middle East and occupied Iraq.

Departing from the usual measured language of diplomacy, 52 British diplomats put their names to a letter rebuking Blair for the acquiescence to Bush’s backing of Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon’s controversial disengagement plan.

More Signatories

The Financial Times said the letter had been drafted by Andrew Killgore, a former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, and Richard Curtiss, former chief inspector of the U.S. Information Agency.

It added that the missive was to have been sent to the White House on April 30, but was held back to allow more former envoys to sign it.

The letter was circulated among the former U.S. diplomats and officials after Bush’s April 14 endorsement of Sharon’s controversial plan for an Israeli withdrawal from all of the Gaza Strip, while tightening the grip on the occupied West Bank.

Ignoring international resolutions and established policies for over half a century, Bush had said Palestinian refugees could not return to their homes in what is now Israel.

Killgore told the BBC: "We thought American diplomats were as unhappy as British diplomats were over what the President did."

He underlined that Bush should not "take away the right of the Palestinians to return, or give Sharon the right to take settlement blocks in the West Bank which will hardly leave the Palestinians any contiguous territory," reported the BBC News Online Tuesday.

"It seems to torpedo the idea of a separate Palestinian state," said the veteran American diplomat.

Killgore told the British broadcaster that the letter was mainly about policy towards Israel and the Palestinians, but it touched on Iraq too.

"If anything Iraq is worse".

Greg Thielmann, a former State Department analyst who signed the letter, saw eye to eye on the repercussions of Bush’s actions on Washington’s foreign policies.

"We are going to have the worst of all possible worlds," he told the BBC.

"We have probably done irretrievable damage in the eyes of the Arab world," Thielmann told the BBC’s Today program.

"And yet we will not accomplish what seemed to be at least one positive part of the plan, which was the giving up on illegal settlements in the Gaza Strip."