 US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made no acknowledgement of Yasser Arafat's grave when she met the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah on Monday before concluding a whirlwind trip to Israel and the PA. Unlike a long line of other leaders who paid some kind of homage to Arafat's grave at the entrance to the Mukata, when visiting PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), Rice's car simply pulled into the compound, passed the grave and Rice got out and walked into the building. On the way out, she also made no acknowledgment of the grave, unlike other leaders, like EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana who laid a wreath or British Prime Minister Tony Blair who walked by and nodded. One US official said that the question of how Rice would comport herself around the grave did not come up in preparatory meetings for the visit. "It was not an issue," he said. The PA decided not to make a fuss about the issue to avoid marring relations with the US. |