Romney vows support for Israel
WITH 100 days to go before the US election, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney used a campaign visit to Israel yesterday to stress the danger of a nuclear Iran and express support for the Jewish state, as he prepared to attend a fund raiser expected to be attended by Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson.
The fund raiser today will be hosted by a crowd of mostly Jewish Americans who live in Israel. Scheduled at a Jerusalem hotel, it has been declared off limits to the news media by the Romney campaign.
The event is notable in that one of the attendees is expected to be Mr Adelson, who had helped bankroll a political action committee in support of Newt Gingrich, Mr Romney’s opponent during the Republican primary battle. Mr Adelson, a strong supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and eager to defeat President Barack Obama, has sent more than $10m to a similar group operating on Mr Romney’s behalf.
The campaign had kept finance events closed to the press, but in May began allowing a pool of reporters into fund raisers that are at public venues, while keeping closed those at private residences.
Mr Romney’s visit to Israel carries political sensitivities for him as he seeks to carefully navigate the complicated world of Middle East politics without violating his personal vow not to criticise Mr Obama while on foreign soil.
He argued that Mr Obama had loosened the normally tight bonds between the US and Israel by proposing last year a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians that would return Israel to pre-1967 borders. Mr Romney was scheduled to meet Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad, but not president Mahmoud Abbas.
He told Mr Netanyahu that he took Israel’s stance on Iran’s nuclear efforts “with great seriousness”.
Mr Romney, whose visit, analysts say, is aimed at wooing pro-Israeli voters in the US, emphasised America’s friendship with Israel, which he said was based on shared interests, values and a commitment to democracy.
Meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres later in the morning, he said Republicans were as concerned as Israel about Iran becoming a nuclear power. The threat it would pose to Israel, the region and the world was “unacceptable”.
He said he also shared Israel’s concern about developments in neighbouring countries like Egypt and Syria. Mr Romney accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of “executing unthinkable horrors against his own people”.
As president, he would use the “weight of the world” and US influence to ensure a continued commitment by Egypt under Muslim Brotherhood leadership to the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
He told Mr Netanyahu he was eager to discuss “further actions that we can take to dissuade Iran from their nuclear folly”.
Mr Netanyahu said that he “couldn’t agree more” with the Republican’s recent remarks that “the greatest danger facing the world is the ayatollah regime possessing nuclear weapons”.
“We have to be honest and say that all the sanctions and diplomacy have not set back the Iranian programme by one iota,” Mr Netanyahu said. “We need a strong and credible military threat, coupled with the sanctions, to have a chance to change that situation,” he said.
Mr Romney flies to Poland next, the third stop on his tour abroad, which began with a visit to Britain for meetings with leaders and the start of the Olympics. Sapa-DPA