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United States first lady Laura Bush speaks at the World Economic
Forum at the Dead Sea in Jordan May 21, 2005.
(Reuters) |
Protesters jostled
and harangued
U.S. first lady Laura Bush
on Sunday when she visited a Jerusalem shrine
at the heart of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"How dare you come in here! Why your husband kill
Muslims?" one protester shouted at the first lady as Israeli police and
U.S. Secret Service agents formed a tight cordon around her to keep people
back. For Bush, on a Middle East goodwill
tour, it was a rare close encounter with
hostile demonstrators.
A small crowd of people pressed in on Bush as she entered the Dome of
the Rock mosque in Jerusalem's walled Old City. One worshipper cried out
as she entered: "None of you belong in here."
Bush, who made an appeal for peace later, did not respond to him or to
an old woman inside the mosque who shouted "Koran, Koran" at her in
Arabic.
Bush, dressed in a black pantsuit, with black headscarf donned in
religious respect and held tightly on her head, exited with police linking
arms around her.
She began a Middle East trip Friday acknowledging that the U.S. image
in the Muslim world had been badly damaged by a prisoner abuse scandal and
a magazine report, since retracted, that U.S. interrogators desecrated the
Koran.
Shortly before visiting the mosque, Bush appeared at the adjacent
ancient Western Wall and was confronted by dozens of nationalist Jews
demanding Washington free convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. They
shouted and waved placards.
Bush inserted a small handwritten note in a cleft
of the wall and paused there for about 60 seconds before returning to her
heavily-guarded motorcade
for the short trip to the mosque.
The disturbances during her trip to the Jerusalem holy site showed
"what an emotional place this is as we go from each one of these very,
very holy spots to the next," Bush said later during a stop in the West
Bank oasis town of Jericho.
"We're reminded again of what we all want, what
every one of us prays for what we all want is peace," said Bush, who in
Jericho heard complaints from Palestinian women about Israeli occupation
policies such as roadblocks.
(Agencies) | 
Updated: 2005-05-23 11:05
