Bahrain MP dares US to lift its embargoes

Manama: A Bahraini deputy has challenged the US to lift its worldwide economic and commercial embargoes after the new American ambassador in Manama said that debates about boycotts were acceptable in the 1960s and 70s, but not in the 21st century.

"If embargoes are now useless as the ambassador has stated, then why doesn't the US lift all the embargoes it has imposed on the countries that have criticised its colonialist policies in their regions? Everybody is well aware that the economy today is the most powerful weapon that can be used to confront enemies," Nasser Al Fadhala, representing the Islamic Menbar, said yesterday in a press statement.

Commenting this week about calls in Bahrain to re-open the Israel boycott office in Manama, Ambassador J. Adam Ereli, who assumed his duties in Bahrain just over a month ago, said that he "understood and sympathised with the desire of the people to achieve justice for the Palestinian people."

But the envoy added that there was a contradiction between opening up on investments and the campaign to sever ties with commercial companies.

Old debate

"The boycott issue is a Bahrain domestic topic, but such a debate is old and is more suitable for the 1960s and 1970s, not for the 21st century," Ereli was quoted as saying by the Al Ayam newspaper during the first interview he has given here.

However, Al Fadhala, who chairs the Palestine Committee in the lower house, dismissed the envoy's suggestions, saying that a commercial boycott of Israel and the states that supported it was not an ephemeral trend.

"We are talking about deep-rooted values that govern the Arab and Islamic nations. The economic boycott is the most redoubtable weapon that we can use to deal with the abuses, murders and destructions perpetrated by the Zionist entity with support from the West," Al Fadhala said.

For the Islamist MP, Arabs and Muslims should think of "new ways and campaigns to reinforce the commercial boycott and inflict the heaviest possible losses on Israel's economy" and "help regain our rights and land."

Bahrain, like most Arab countries, does not have diplomatic ties with Israel, although it shut down the Israel boycott office in 2004 as a requirement to sign a Free Trade Agreement with the US.