Former hostage Waite condemns West
 |
Waite was held captive for five years.
Story Tools
SPECIAL REPORT
|
|
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
|
Follow the news that matters to you. Create your own alert to be notified on topics you're interested in.
Or, visit Popular Alerts for suggestions.
|
|
BEIRUT, Lebanon (Reuters) -- Former hostage Terry Waite says the West's failure to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict was breeding terrorism.
"I am not happy with the way in which the West is attempting to deal with so-called terrorists," the former Church of England envoy said during his first visit to Lebanon since he was freed in 1991 from five years of captivity.
"Because of chronic failure to deal with ... the Israeli-Arab dispute, we are making further problems across the Arab world. Pushing more people into extreme positions because they then have no hope simply means that we are fostering terrorism."
The United States brands a number of Middle East-based groups fighting against Israel, including Lebanon's Hizbollah and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as terrorist organizations.
Waite, who helped free Westerners held in Libya, Iran and Lebanon, came to Lebanon in 1987 to negotiate more releases.
Accused of being a spy, Waite was himself taken hostage by a group at the core of Lebanon's Shi'ite Muslim movement of the 1980s, behind attacks on a U.S. Marines barracks and the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.
Waite spent most of his five years in captivity in solitary confinement, chained to a wall and often in darkness.
Back 12 years after his release on another humanitarian mission, this time for Y Care, the overseas development arm of the YMCA, Waite said he was not bitter.
"Do I have bitterness? No. In war people behave in strange and unusual ways. They do not always behave according to their true character," he said of his captivity during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.
Waite toured Palestinian refugee camps in northern Lebanon Tuesday, meeting youths who had benefited from programs run by his group. He heads Thursday to Gaza and Jerusalem, where Y Care funds projects for Palestinians.
Waite said it was a "disgrace" that Palestinians were still living in camps over half a century after they were displaced.
He also criticized the indefinite U.S. detention of hundreds of foreign suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as part of the U.S. war on terror launched after the September 11 attacks.
"I'm not happy with the way the West seems to be stereotyping the Arab world and the Islamic world," he said.
Copyright 2004
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
