follow up of Pr Henry's comment

["Kessaissia, Mazine" <mazine.kessaissia@mail.utexas.edu>]

To follow up on US policy in the Middle-East regarding Israeli occupation of 
the Palestinian land that Pr Henry was talking about this morning.
With that kind of actions, the US wants once again to make peace in the region:

"US President George W. Bush, at the risk of angering the Arab and Muslim 
worlds, yesterday signed legislation that requires the administration to 
identify occupied Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a US official said. Faced 
with a choice between endorsing the controversial legislation passed by 
Congress and shutting down US diplomatic activity, Mr Bush put his name to the 
Foreign Relations Authorisation Act for 2003, which gives the administration 
more than $4 billion for running the State Department. 
The White House, in a statement later, will argue that the language on 
occupied Jerusalem reflects a "sense of the Congress" and is not binding for 
US policy, a senior official said. The bill goes further on Jerusalem than 
previously demanded by Congress, which for years has pressed successive 
administrations on the related question of moving the US Embassy to Israel 
from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 

Administrations have promised to make the move but have repeatedly put it off 
because of the ill feeling it would create in the Arab world, which considers 
East Jerusalem to be occupied territory and the capital of a future 
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. US State Department spokesman 
Richard Boucher said yesterday the United States continues to believe that the 
status of Jerusalem should be decided in "permanent status" talks between 
Israelis and Palestinians. "We have always opposed legislative action that 
hinders the president's prerogatives in advancing our interests in the region 
and promoting a just and lasting peace," he added. 

Israel captured the eastern part of the city in the 1967 war and later annexed 
it. Israeli governments have said the whole city is Israel's eternal capital. 
The new legislation, passed last week, does not go beyond previous calls on 
the administration to start immediately the process of moving the embassy to 
Jerusalem. 

But it adds three mandatory provisions which change the way the United States 
treats the city. Firstly, it says that the administration cannot spend money 
on the US consulate in Jerusalem unless the consulate is under the supervision 
of the US ambassador to Israel. The US consul-general in Jerusalem, who deals 
mainly with Palestinians, now reports directly to the State Department.