wfn.org | Middle East Council Asks President Bush to Intervene

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Contact: Riad Jarjour
General Secretary
Middle East Council of Churches
Beirut, Lebanon
Tel: 961.1.353.938
Email: meccapa@spidernet.com.cy

JERUSALEM, April 3, 2000--The Executive Secretary of the Middle East Council 
of Churches, whose offices are in Beirut, has sent the following open letter 
to the President of the United States:

President George W. Bush
The White House of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue 
Washington D.C 20500  U.S.A.      

Dear Mister President,      

As the spokesperson for the member churches of the Middle East  Council of 
Churches and, through them, for the indigenous Christian communities in the 
Middle East, I appeal to you, as leader of the only power able to act in a 
decisive and effective way, to intervene in the chaotic, evil, senseless and 
tragic conflict now raging within the boundaries of the Holy Land.      

Hour by hour we see gathering momentum a process leading pell-mell  toward 
genocide. The Palestinian community, in all its religious and ethnic 
diversity, has become the target of a sustained campaign of terror and 
destruction. 

Violence, whatever its source, will never cure the ills of our region. It 
only increases the strike and  counter-strike message of the blood feud now 
being written ever larger and more ominously across our skies.      

I appeal to you, Mister President, to oblige Prime Minister Sharon to step 
back from the brink of horror and humanitarian abomination. He  must set his 
personal and emotional agenda aside, and begin to act as a mature moral agent 
both for the sake of his own people and for the sake of people everywhere. 
His current policies are only deepening and enriching the breeding grounds 
for fanaticism and violence. 

As a first step, he must make it possible for the Palestinian National  
Authority (all its flaws and weaknesses notwithstanding) to resume its role 
as credible a partner in dialogue, and to desist forthwith from brutalizing 
and mauling Palestinian cities and centers.      

You, Sir, are in a unique (if, perhaps, unenviable) position to interfere in 
the
degenerate dynamic that now pervades geographical Palestine and all its
people. You have it in your power to force the  introduction of a process
that will lead, first, toward calm, and, second, toward open negotiation
whose clear object is peace. 

The Arab  states have clearly shown their willingness to support you in such 
an  initiative. Their help will be decisive in providing elements for a 
revived peace process. It will be a shame were history to record that, in the 
presence of manifest evil, and with rewards of goodness within reach, the 
President of the United States chose not to act.      

We pray for you and with you that God will imbue with wisdom and 
righteousness the counsels of the powerful, and that the moral
and political will to do what is right will prevail. 

I express the  longing of the Middle East's Easter people. May life indeed 
emerge  triumphant over the powers of death and Hades. We urge you, Mister  
President, to choose life.      

Sincerely,      
Rev. Dr. Riad Jarjour   
General Secretary   
The Middle East Council of Churches (MECC)