The US Defense Department said Tuesday it did not like "a lot of things" in a declaration adopted by an Islamic summit in Qatar.
"When we looked at the OIC summit statement, there are a lot of things in it that we did not like," said a senior department official who wished to remain unidentified.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference "invited" its members to break ties with Israel and expressed "total confidence" in the Palestinian leadership in a final declaration ending their ninth summit.
The OIC also gave the green light for its 56 members to ignore a UN air embargo on Baghdad and implicitly called for an end to US and British air strikes on Iraq.
The senior defense official said the crisis in Middle East should be resolved through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
"We didn't find that that was a very constructive or very good approach to our efforts to try to change the situation on the ground and bring everybody back to the negotiating table," the official said of the OIC declaration.
"It's not helping the situation," the official added.
US Defense Secretary William Cohen leaves on a tour of Middle East and Gulf countries Wednesday. He is scheduled to visit Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Israel – WASHINGTON (AFP)
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