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Muslim Leaders In Minnesota Complain About St. Paul Mayor’s Israel Trip
WASHINGTON (Islam Online & News Agencies) - On Monday, Muslim leaders and spokesman gathered outside St. Paul, Minnesota, Mayor Norm Coleman’s City Hall office to show their disapproval towards his four-day trip to Israel last week during this sensitive time without meeting Palestinians there.
After his return Monday afternoon, Coleman was unavailable to meet with Muslim leaders. The mayor’s communications director, Leslie Kupchella, said that Coleman is anxious to meet with representatives of local Islamic groups as soon as possible and that his staff is trying to arrange a meeting soon.
She also said that Coleman’s trip to Israel was too crowded to allow time to visit with Palestinians, but that he and the other mayors who met with the Israeli President, and Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa’s mayors, discussed their interest to meet with Palestinian mayors in the future.
At a news conference Monday at City Hall, Samir Saikali of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said that by Coleman’s visit to Israel, he had disregarded the suffering of thousands of Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, killed or injured in the recent Intifada.
“No attempt was made by Mayor Coleman to consult even with members of his own growing constituency of Muslims...to attempt to sugarcoat the true purpose of this trip,” he said.
There are more than 100,000 Muslims living in Minnesota, 70,000 of them are living the metro area.
Coleman, who is a Jewish, was one of the six U.S. mayors who went Wednesday to Israel, which was sponsored and financed by the American Jewish Congress and the Israel Ministry of Tourism with the cooperation of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
The U.S. mayors’ trip was organized in order to show support for Israel’s largest cities’ mayors and to help in confirming the safety of Israel for tourist trips, despite the recent violence.
“References to peace, friendship and the promotion of tourism only adds insult to injury,” Saikali said to the media.
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