Oh dear:
The British Government has condemned former London mayor Ken Livingstone for his interview with Hamas head Khalid Meshal published in a UK current affairs publication on Friday.
Former London mayor ‘Red Ken’…
Foreign Office Minister, Ivan Lewis, accused Livingstone of handing a “propaganda coup to the leader of a terrorist organization” after an interview with the Hamas leader, who lives in exile in Damascus, appeared in the latest edition of the left-wing political weekly New Statesman.“Ken Livingstone rightly earned praise for his strong and responsible leadership in the aftermath of the 7/7 attacks on London,” Lewis said on Friday. “It is therefore particularly regrettable that he learned the wrong lessons from history by handing a propaganda coup to the leader of a terrorist organization.”
Britain, along with the European Union and US, deems Hamas a terrorist group and has pledged to isolate it until it adopts the Quartet principles – recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and accepting previous interim peace accords.
“Hamas has not only breached international law by firing rockets at civilian populations in Israel but continues to violate the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza,” Lewis added.
New Statesman described the interview as a “world exclusive.” Popular UK blog “Harry’s Place” disagreed saying it was an exclusive “only in the sense that no other mainstream publication in the world would print it.”
