The White House and the State Department both said Monday that the United States was concerned by Israel's assassination of Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin in the Gaza Strip and insisted that Washington had no warning of the attack.
The State Department said the attack increases tensions and would make it harder to pursue peace in the Middle East. “We are troubled,” spokesman Richard Boucher. However, he did not directly condemn Israel’s killing of the spiritual leader of Hamas as he left a mosque in Gaza.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, coordinating the U.S. message to Jerusalem, said “we are deeply troubled by this morning’s incident in Gaza.”
Both Boucher and McClellan also denounced Yassin’s group as a terrorist organization and, along with other Bush administration officials, urged restraint on both sides in the conflict. European nations and the United Nations flatly condemned Israel.
Secretary of State Colin Powell intended to discuss the stymied peacemaking process in a meeting with visiting Israel Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom that had been scheduled weeks ago.
Retaliation threats taken seriously
The killing of the Hamas leader raised fears of possible retaliation against the United States. U.S. counterterrorism officials said they would watch closely after Hamas said it would hold the United States responsible for the attack.
Earlier, Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security adviser, said Israel gave the United States no advance warning of the attack. And Boucher said no one in the U.S. government had been informed before Israel killed Yassin and two of his body guards with a missile attack.
Rice said she knew of no consultations between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Bush about any plan to target the sheik, who helped found the group in 1987.
But Rice, asked about U.S. reaction to the attack during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, said: “Let’s remember that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that Sheik Yassin has himself, personally, we believe, been involved in terrorist planning.”
Killed after leaving mosque
Yassin was killed with seven other people early Monday as he left a mosque in the Gaza Strip. The killing also sparked larger, more violent demonstrations throughout the Hamas stronghold of Gaza.
A week ago, the Bush administration had warned that meaningful peace talks progress in Mideast peacemaking would be very difficult unless Palestinian leaders cracked down on terror groups. This followed two suicide bombings in Israel.
Sharon had ruled out negotiations with the Palestinians after the bombings May 14 in Ashdod that killed 10 people. He called off a meeting he had been expected to hold that week with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.
U.S. officials didn’t respond directly to Sharon’s decision. But State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said at the time that while the administration supported a Sharon-Qureia meeting “clearly recent events have to be taken into account.”
Also, Ereli said, it was up to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to decide whether to hold meetings.
