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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: March 30, 2006 |
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A Palestinian human rights lawyer missed scheduled meetings at the State Department and White House this week because he couldn't get a visa to enter the United States, a rights group said.
Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, was asked by the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to get an Israeli "police certificate" before his visa application could be approved, said the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.
The center last week launched a campaign to pressure the U.S. government to admit Sourani without the police document, which the center calls an "absurd" and arbitrary post-Sept. 11 terrorism measure.
Sourani was supposed to be in the area for a week of meetings starting last Friday that included officials at the National Security Council, the World Bank and the State Department's bureau for democracy, labor and human rights, as well as with academics at local universities, said Sushetha Gopallawa of the Kennedy center.
Asked why someone invited for high-level meetings would then have trouble getting the consulate to issue a visa, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday that consular officers were trying to "uphold and implement U.S. law."
Gopallawa said Sourani skipped a 2003 visit to the U.S. because he also had refused at that time to comply with the requirement for an Israeli document.
"They are asking a Palestinian to get a police certificate from an Israeli, which is an illegal occupier," she said.
"Forcing a Palestinian to obtain a police clearance from an occupier who was instructed to withdraw over 35 years ago is absurd," Kennedy center Director Todd Howland said in a statement. He was referring to a 1967 U.N. resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territories.
McCormack said consular officers must make "hard judgments, concerning people's backgrounds, people's intention, as well as the paperwork that they have in front of them."
"The United States and our consular officers around the world try to make the visa process as understandable, comprehensible and, if I dare use the word, pleasant as possible," he said. "And, oftentimes, that's hard to do."
Asked whether there should be coordination between officials considering the visa and officials who have invited the person to the U.S., McCormack said: "The consular officer has an obligation to make a judgment based on the merits of the case ... not whether or not somebody's going to be missing a meeting."
In 1990, Sourani received the Kennedy center award given annually to a human rights activist who uses nonviolent methods of advocacy. |
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