Bush, ending Mideast tour, promises to return to advance peace talks [View All]

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Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Bush, ending Mideast tour, promises to return to advance peace talks
Miret el Naggar and Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: January 16, 2008 10:59:33 AM

CAIRO, Egypt — President Bush said Wednesday that achieving peace in the Middle East would remain a priority goal for his last full year in office and promised that he'd return to the region to monitor developments.

"I mean what I say," he said at the resort town of Sharm el Sheik on the final stop of an eight-day tour of the Middle East.

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Independent Egyptian newspapers and opposition activists expressed anger over Bush's arrival in Egypt a day after an Israeli military operation killed 19 Palestinians in Gaza, including a son of the leader of the powerful militant Islamist group Hamas.

"We reject this visit and condemn it, all these massacres that happen in Palestine," said Hamdy Hassan, an Egyptian legislator from the parliamentary bloc of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological inspiration for Hamas. "Yesterday's events in Gaza are not a coincidence, and they happen with American weapons. . . . This visit is an insult — two or three hours, just a pit stop."

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