Egypt accuses US of complicity in war crimes

CAIRO (AFP) — US government officials should be put on trial for “complicity in war crimes” for helping Israel to cover up massacres during its offensive in the West Bank, an Egyptian government newspaper charged here Monday.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to the Middle East “has offered an unprecedented occasion to reveal the extent of the US government's political and moral failure,” said Al Ahram newspaper editorialist Salama Ahmad Salama.

“The US government has tried by all possible means to cover the crimes of (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon,” Salama charged.

He reproached Powell for having condemned “martyr operations (suicide bombings) without taking the trouble to visit the sites of massacres committed by Israel in Jenin, Nablus, and other towns in the West Bank,” he said.

In those places the “Israeli army buried hundreds of bodies in the rubble or in mass graves,” Salama charged.