US Defense Secretary William Cohen met Emirati leaders on Saturday during a visit to Abu Dhabi, as officials in his delegation said the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had not ruined the good ties between the two states.
Cohen met the United Arab Emirates (UAE) armed forces chief of staff, General Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahyan, and Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan.
UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nayhan, their father, is still in a US hospital recovering from a kidney transplant operation in August.
As Cohen prepared to leave for Qatar on the next leg of his tour after Bahrain and Oman, US officials described the UAE as a longstanding "good friend" of the United States.
"The Middle East crisis has not derailed our relationship," one official told reporters travelling with Cohen.
Around 300 US aircrew involved in "Operation Southern Watch" to enforce a no-fly zone over southern Iraq are stationed in the UAE, according to US sources. And its port of Dubai is used by the US Fifth Fleet which helps enforce sanctions on Iraq.
The United States also praised the UAE for auctioning off tankers intercepted by the US navy in Gulf waters for violating the sanctions in force against Iraq since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The tankers' illegal cargoes of Iraqi crude and oil products are also sold off, with the proceeds going into a UN compensation fund for the invasion, the US sources said.
But in contrast to the US tough line on Iraq, the UAE is a strong supporter of Iraq's campaign for a lifting of the decade-old embargo.
And the Cohen visit took place under the shadow of the seven-week-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that has cost more than 240 lives, most of them Palestinians killed by Israeli army gunfire.
Newspapers in the UAE, where pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been held as in the rest of the Arab world, have vented their anger over the killings at US support for the Jewish state.
Al-Bayan, a leading daily, on Saturday blasted the West's "flagrant and shameful partiality" in favor of Israel.
"This partiality is apparent in the US position and the current passivity of the Europeans in the face of Israel's brutality in the occupied territories," the paper said in an editorial.
On Sunday, Cohen is to travel on to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, returning to Oman on Monday for a meeting with Sultan Qaboos, who is celebrating the 30th anniversary of his rule.
The defense secretary will also visit Egypt, Jordan and Israel before returning to Washington on Wednesday. The tour has been organized under strict security following the October 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 sailors -- ABU DHABI (AP)
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