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Australian FM Alexander Downer joins row over peace prize to Palestinian Hanan Ashrawi
Jordan Times, Monday, October 27, 2003
SYDNEY (AFP) — Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on Sunday joined the furore over the award of a leading peace prize to Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi, saying he did not understand why she had got it. Downer told national television that although he knew Ashrawi quite well, he did not think she had been “a significant figure” in the Middle East peace process.
A more appropriate choice for the Sydney Peace Prize, he said, would have been former Palestinian Prime Mininster Abu Mazen. However, Downer expressed surprise that anyone from that region had been chosen at all.
“I would have thought if you wanted to choose a Palestinian over the last year — and the situation is so bad I'm surprised anyone is being chosen from that region — but if you wanted to choose a Palestinian you'd chose someone like Abu Mazen, who made an enormous effort to try to bring about the roadmap and implement peace,” Downer told national television.
“I don't think Ashrawi has been a significant figure in that process.”
The award to Ashrawi was announced in August, but became a political football after Sydney Lord Mayor Lucy Turnbull announced she would boycott the award ceremony, scheduled for Nov. 6. The move was especially embarrassing as the city is the award's major sponsor.
Critics said Turnbull was playing politics as her husband Malcolm Turnbull, a leading light in Prime Minister John Howard's Liberal Party, is seeking selection as a candidate in a safe seat with a large Jewish population.
Jewish groups have slammed the award, claiming Ashrawi had defended what Israelis and their supporters call "terrorism" (i.e. resistance to the Israeli occupation) and pushed a policy inconsistent with a two-state solution in the Middle East.
New South Wales state premier Bob Carr, of the rival Labour Party, has refused to bow to the pressure and has said he still intended to present the award worth 50,000 dollars ($34,500).
Ashrawi served as spokeswoman of the Palestinian negotiating delegation between 1991 and 1993. After Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority was created, she served as minister of higher education from 1996 through 1998.
She founded the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy in 1998.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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