Bush takes protests in her stride

US first lady Laura Bush (R) accompanied by the wife of Israeli President Gila Katsav (L) visits the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Picture / Reuters

ABU GHOSH - United States first lady Laura Bush says she was not surprised to be met by protesters during her tour of Middle East holy sites and pledged the US will do all it can to help resolve age-old conflicts.

"As we all know, this is a place of very high tensions and high emotions," Bush said in the courtyard of the Church of the Resurrection in Abu Ghosh, near Jerusalem.

"And you can understand why when you see the people with a deep and sincere faith in their religion all living side by side."

The protesters who heckled her yesterday during visits to the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City did not surprise her and she denied they overshadowed her goodwill visit.

"I think the protests were very expected. If you didn't expect them, you didn't know what it would be like when you got here," she said.

"Everyone knows how the tensions are and, believe me, I was very, very welcomed by most people."

Protesters jostled and harangued Bush when she visited a Jerusalem shrine holy to both Muslims and Jews and at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli police and US Secret Service agents formed a tight cordon around her to push back crowds in what for Bush, who is on a Middle East goodwill tour, was a rare close encounter with hostile demonstrators.

A small crowd of about two dozen people pressed in on Bush as she entered the Dome of the Rock mosque. A Palestinian worshipper cried out at her: "You are not welcome here. Why are you hassling our Muslims? How dare you come in here?"

Bush, who made an appeal for peace later, did not respond to him or an old woman inside the mosque who shouted "Koran, Koran" at her.

Bush left with police linking arms around her to ward off onlookers.

She began a Middle East trip at the weekend acknowledging that the US image in the Muslim world had been badly damaged by a prisoner abuse scandal and a magazine report, since retracted, that US interrogators desecrated the Koran.

Shortly before visiting the mosque, Bush appeared at the adjacent ancient Western Wall and was confronted by dozens of nationalist Jews demanding Washington free convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. They shouted and waved placards.

Bush inserted a small handwritten note in a cleft of the wall before returning to her heavily guarded motorcade for the short trip to the mosque.

The disturbances during her trip to the Jerusalem holy site showed "what an emotional place this is as we go from each one of these very, very holy spots to the next", she said later during a stop in the West Bank oasis town of Jericho.

"We're reminded again of what we all want, what every one of us prays for ... what we all want is peace."

Bush said the chance of achieving peace "right now ... is as close as we've been in a really long time".

- REUTERS