(TIME) Elaine Shannon - According to Martin Indyk, former Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs and U.S. Ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration, "What Secretary Rice knows and hasn't said is that the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is controlled by Iran. While it's important, essential, to get the Syrians to shut down the PIJ office in Damascus, it's also important to be clear about what the source of the problem is. From the mid-1990s, Iran has been determined to use PIJ terrorist operations to disrupt the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and there is a very clear of pattern of PIJ activities during the intifada. Whenever [the region] calmed down, it was the PIJ that launched terrorist attacks, because the Iranians have a very strong interest in preventing the peace process from going forward. We should be pointing the finger at Iran and pressuring them, with the Europeans, to stop this sponsorship of terrorism against the Israeli-Palestinian peace process."
2005-03-04 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive