- guardian.co.uk, Friday April 5 2002 08.57 BST
"Mr Bush is conspicuously ignorant of the situation in the Middle East," he said. "All that he knows comes from the rightwing pro-Israeli extreme in US politic ... If it is so urgent, why is secretary of state Powell coming next week and not tomorrow?"
Bassem Eid of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group said: "If Mr Bush says that he wants to fight against terror then he should declare what the Israelis are doing in the occupied territories as state terror.
"America has had no credibility in this region really since the Gulf war and it has intensified in recent months with America's collusion with Israel. No one here expects anything any more from American interventions."
The Iraqi vice-president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, told reporters in Beirut as he left a meeting with the Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, that the speech was intended "to buy time". He said he doubted "Israel will listen to an opinion calling for moderation and withdrawal".
The latest crisis has seen massive demonstrations against the Israeli military action across the Islamic world.
Some 20,000 demonstrators marched through the southern Lebanese port of Sidon, carrying pictures of Mr Arafat, chanting "Sharon you pig" and burning the Israeli flag. Thousands more Lebanese and Palestinians from refugee camps demonstrated in the northern city of Tripoli.
In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, 2,000 people called for an end to Israeli military action on the third day of protests in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
In Cairo the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, urged Israel to grasp the hand of peace extended by Arabs.
"Arab countries have extended their hands in peace to Israel twice, first in the Cairo Arab summit of 1996 ... and secondly at the Beirut summit [last month]," Mr Mubarak said in a formal televised address.
