Rice: Officials Advised Carter Not to Meet With Hamas

[ZombieHorde]

By Karen DeYoung

KUWAIT CITY, April 22-- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Tuesday refuted a statement by former president Jimmy Carter that no one in the U.S. government told him not to go on a trip to the Middle East, where he met with the leadership of the militant group Hamas.

"I just don't want there to be any confusion," Rice told reporters outside an international meeting on Iraq she is attending here. "The United States is not going to deal with Hamas, and we certainly told President Carter that meeting with Hamas was not going to help" the situation in the Middle East.

Carter has said he met with Assistant Secretary of State C. David Welch, who indicated that the trip was not advisable but did not tell him not to go.

Rice went out of her way Tuesday to issue an on-the-record statement saying that "we counseled President Carter against" the trip. "We wanted to make sure there would be no confusion and that there would be no sense that he was somehow a party to peace negotiations" between Israel and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, she said.

----------------------
Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/22/AR2008042200864.html

[Faux pas]

1. rice added, 'We haven't made all the money we can off the

Middle East yet, ole Jimmy boy is messing up our game plan.'

}(

[bdamomma]

2. rice can go to hell.

I am sure she will be warmly welcomed.

[bushmeister0]

3. Rice says, "that meeting with Hamas was not going to help"

Well, what has she done that's helped anything? She didn't want to talk to Hezbollah either during the Summer War in '06 until they totally surrendered and we see how well that worked out.

Carter at least got Hamas to say they would except Israel, something the Iraqi government hasn't said it would do.