US embassy in Tel Aviv unlikely to move

Dubai: Despite the insistence of the Republican Platform Committee to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem, the move will not necessarily take place, the committee's head has said.

"There is a disconnect between activists that control the platform committee in the Republican Party and the party's political leadership ... The platform is not something the leadership is bound to," said Steven Duffield, executive director of the committee that is tasked with drafting the Republican Party's platform.

Duffield was speaking via videoconference from the floor of the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, US, to an audience in Dubai at the Dubai School of Government. The event was organised in association with the Dubai Press Club and the American Centre for Press and Cultural Affairs at the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi.

Adherence

Duffield said moving the American embassy to occupied Jerusalem had been brought up in the committee last week "and it passed overwhelmingly".

He added that the party leadership tries to abide to "between 95 and 98 per cent" of the platform's decisions and it did not necessarily have to implement all of its objectives.

The Republican Party platform for 2008 specifies its position on occupied Jerusalem as Israel's undivided capital and "moving the American embassy to that undivided capital of Israel". Previous American administrations have repeatedly renewed the promise to move the embassy to occupied Jerusalem, but none have been fulfilled.