Posted on 06/06/2004 11:39:11 PM PDT by abu afak
Israel alone remembers Reagan as a friend in the Middle East
Sun Jun 6, 5:30 PM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel was alone among countries in the Middle East in paying fond tribute to late US president Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) as a friend.
"President Reagan was a friend to Israel and during his presidency relations between the two countries were based on both understanding and cooperation," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s office said in a statement.
The premier extended his condolences to the family and window of the former US president who died at 93 on Saturday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.
Iran, which was at the centre of one of the biggest scandals of the Reagan era, refused comment on Sunday, while Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi regretted he died without facing charges for the 1986 US air strikes against Libya.
"No," was the blunt reaction of Iranian government spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi when he was asked for an official comment on Reagan's death.
It emerged in 1986 that United States was selling arms to Iran in return for help in freeing hostages held in Lebanon, and then diverting proceeds to Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
An Iranian hand was also seen in the emergence of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the 1983 suicide attack on US marines in Lebanon which left more than 200 dead, as well as mounting regional tension as Iran sought to export its 1979 Islamic revolution.
In turn, the Reagan administration was a major supplier of weapons to Iraq (news - web sites) during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, during which close to a million people -- a majority of them Iranians -- were killed.
Reagan's death was given only a brief mention on state television, although the hardline Kayhan evening newspaper did give a short commentary.
"During the Reagan administration, weapons of mass destruction flooded Iraq and were used against Iran.
"Also under Reagan's orders, an Iranian passenger jet was shot at over the Persian Gulf by an American warship, and 290 passengers lost their lives," it said in reference to the 1988 downing of an Iran Air flight by the USS Vincennes.
Kadhafi lost an adopted daughter, Haifa, when his Tripoli residence was hit in the US attacks on the Libyan capital and the northern city of Benghazi on April 14, 1986.
He told the JANA news agency he was sorry Reagan died before he could be prosecuted for crimes committed "against the children of Libya" during the strikes.
In reporting his death, JANA described Reagan as the "accomplice of (then British prime minister Margaret) Thatcher in the US attack on Kadhafi's residence and on the two cities of Benghazi and Tripoli in 1986."
God Bless Israel. The tribute is just awesome and won't ever be forgotten.
I thought Natan Sharansky's Eulogy (Posted here a Few Hours ago) to be the Most moving of Any I have read:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1148749/posts
and very Telling of what he did for the World as a whole.
If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.
Bump
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