[Kabar-indonesia] Indonesians with fake explosive belts protest outside US Embassy over Mideast

[JoyoNews at aol.com]

also: LATimes: On Cease-Fire, U.S. Diplomacy 
Again Takes a Go-It-Alone Path

Indonesians Protest Outside US Embassy Over Middle East

JAKARTA, Aug. 1 (AP)--Muslims brandishing toy guns and fake 
explosive belts rallied outside the U.S. embassy in Indonesia 
on Tuesday to protest Israeli attacks on Lebanon. 

Some protesters said they wanted to travel to the Middle East 
to fight the Jewish state. 

Police confiscated toys guns and fake explosive belts from 
several of the protesters. 

"We ask the government to (transport us to Lebanon) so we 
can help our brothers and sisters there who are being killed 
and ravaged by Israel and America, the enemies of Islam," 
said Allawi Usman, a protest leader. 

Fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas has 
killed at least 575 people since July 12, more than three-quarters 
of them civilians in Lebanon, sparking international opposition 
to the Jewish state's tactics. 

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has accused 
Israel of violating international law and called for an immediate 
cease-fire backed up by a U.N.-led peacekeeping force. 

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The Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, August 1, 2006

On Cease-Fire, U.S. Diplomacy Again Takes a Go-It-Alone Path

By Tyler Marshall
Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON -- Reeling from a week of diplomatic setbacks in the Middle East, 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice limped home Monday insisting that the 
United States would back a cease-fire agreement to end the war in Lebanon only if 
it contained the seeds of a long-term settlement to the crisis.

Despite growing world anger at the U.S. rejection of an immediate and 
unconditional cease-fire, Rice and President Bush held firm Monday to the 
administration's position. Any end to hostilities must include a plan to neutralize the 
Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah and its ability to attack Israel, they 
said.

Describing the 20-day-old conflict that has engulfed much of Lebanon and 
northern Israel as part of a larger struggle between terrorism and democracy, Bush 
told an audience of Coast Guard personnel in Miami that the U.S. would press 
its case for what he called "a sustainable cease-fire."

"We're going to work with our allies to bring before the United Nations 
Security Council a resolution that will end the violence and lay the groundwork for 
lasting peace in the Middle East," Bush said.

Rice told reporters traveling with her as she headed back to Washington, "It 
doesn't make sense to have no political framework that the cease-fire is 
trying to protect."

But with Rice's Middle East trip cut short and an important meeting scheduled 
for Monday at the U.N. postponed after Israel's airstrike on a Lebanese 
village Sunday, it remained unclear when and how the administration planned to move 
forward.

The strike, on a house in Qana where Israelis said they thought Hezbollah 
fighters were hiding, killed as many as 56 civilians, most of them women, 
children and the elderly.

Fallout from the bombing seemed to leave U.S. diplomacy in worse shape than 
when Rice left Washington a week ago, with little visible progress toward a 
cease-fire, a weakened democratic government in Lebanon, a diminished number of 
allies in America's corner and its leverage to shape events shrinking.

In advance of an expected cease-fire call by the Security Council this week, 
more details emerged about the reported terms of a broader accord. The Israeli 
newspaper Haaretz said in today's editions that Israel was willing to release 
two Lebanese prisoners in exchange for the two Israeli soldiers captured by 
Hezbollah on July 12.

Even if the U.S. succeeds in getting a U.N. resolution that would tie a 
cease-fire to the disarmament of Hezbollah, exactly who would be able to conduct 
such a task is far from certain.

There is support among most countries for an international peacekeeping body 
to enforce a cease-fire once it is agreed upon. There is much less willingness 
to send troops to staff the peacekeeping mission, particularly if it involves 
the prospect of having to fight Hezbollah's guerrillas.

As the diplomatic efforts unfold, the Bush administration has appeared once 
more to be slipping into the role of go-it-alone superpower defying the 
collective wishes of its allies.

Last week's meeting in Rome, which U.S. officials had hoped would display a 
unified commitment to Lebanon, instead highlighted the gulf between U.S. allies 
and Rice, whom they feared was delaying a halt in fighting to allow Israel to 
batter Hezbollah.

And as American prestige has fallen, the war has built support for Hezbollah, 
which has not only shown it is willing to stand up to Israel but that it is a 
competent and determined foe.

"This administration is learning that power is not the same thing as 
influence," said Judith Kipper, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign 
Relations. "We have lots of power but not much influence."

Even in Bush's party, the disquiet was visible.

"The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now," Sen. Chuck Hagel 
(R-Neb.) said on the Senate floor Monday. "President Bush must call for an immediate 
cease-fire. This madness must stop."

The continued bloodshed has further fanned public anger against the U.S. in 
much of the Arab world, forcing normally friendly governments such as Egypt and 
Saudi Arabia to repudiate Washington's position and providing a field day for 
America's adversaries.

Syria has seized on the chance to rally Arabs in favor of the resistance 
against Israel. President Bashar Assad on Monday accused Israel and the U.S. of 
"hijacking the legitimacy, institutions and decision-making" of the 
international community in order to continue an "inhuman war of genocide."

Syria has been working to mobilize Arab and international public opinion 
against Israel and in favor of an immediate cease-fire that would not obligate 
Hezbollah to abandon its weapons, precisely the scenario that Rice has sought to 
avoid.

Bouthaina Shaaban, a member of the Syrian Cabinet and an advisor to Assad, 
denounced the U.S. and Israel in an interview.

"There is now, I think, a deliberate strategy to make the Middle East 
governed by Israel and the United States," she said. "A plan was in place to destroy 
Lebanon and bring it under the Israeli wing."

Underscoring the United States' deteriorating relations with traditional 
allies is the reaction of France, which has worked closely with the Bush 
administration over the last two years to bring stability to Lebanon. 

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy publicly chided the U.S., 
Israel and others who did not join in his country's early call for a cease-fire.

On the same day at the U.N., Axel Cruau, a spokesman for the French mission, 
dismissed a meeting scheduled to deal with the crisis as premature and 
possibly counterproductive.

Just hours earlier, Rice had pinned hopes on the meeting, describing the U.N. 
as the venue where "the action really now needs to be."

Times staff writers Kim Murphy in Damascus, Syria; Rone Tempest in Beirut; 
Paul Richter in Shannon, Ireland; and Walter Hamilton at the United Nations 
contributed to this report.

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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