An embarrassed United States said Tuesday that one of its diplomats had "unwittingly" met in Syria with associates of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a group Washington has designated a banned “terrorist” organization.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the meeting took place when a diplomat from the US embassy in Damascus mistakenly went to a PFLP-GC-funded radio station in the Syrian capital in the context of a series of meetings to get to know local journalists there, AFP reported Tuesday.
"It is our understanding that during the course of some meetings with a broad array of Arab media one of our public affairs officers from the American embassy in Damascus unwittingly met with officials from a radio station funded by the PFLP-GC," Boucher said.
"At the time of the meeting, the officer was not aware of the connections of that organization or these individuals or the radio station," he told reporters.
"This contact was immediately terminated once the officer became aware of this PFLP-GC connection," Boucher stated, pointing out that US policy toward the group had not changed and that there would be no such further meetings.
"The PFLP-GC remains on our list of foreign terrorist organizations and US officials are instructed not to meet with members of these organizations," he said.
Groups on that list are subject to various US travel and financial sanctions including visa bans, the freezing of assets and bars on their ability to raise money in the United States.
Boucher declined to identify the diplomat by name and would not say whether the official had been subject to any disciplinary action.
"(When) somebody makes a mistake, we take the appropriate action," he claimed. "But the policy action is to make sure that we don't unwittingly have this kind of meeting again.
"We all want to make sure that to the best of our knowledge and ability we uphold the policy of not meeting with people like that."
Boucher could not give a date for the accidental meeting, however, his remarks came after flurry of reports this month in Lebanon that an American diplomat had been in contact with another banned Palestinian movement in Damascus.
On March 10, the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar reported that a US diplomat had met with members of the radical Hamas movement.
The US embassy flatly denied the report but four days later another Lebanese paper reported the same thing.
Boucher did not address any possible meetings between a US diplomat and Hamas.
Both the PFLP-GC and Hamas are strongly opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
