McCain on Middle East, China, Russia
Posted: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 5:22 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC’s Abby Livingston
McCain’s speech to the leaders of major Jewish organizations in New York City today hopped the globe in addressing his view of American foreign policy.
“I believe that all of the situation in the Middle East is connected,” McCain said as he discussed Iraq and how he would not divorce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the issue of Islamic extremism. His off-the-cuff comments, however, branched out far beyond the Middle East. McCain sees Russia and China as obstructing the U.S. agenda as well.
“I think the larger problem is that we're facing a United Nations,” McCain said, “and I'm not for getting out of the United Nations and all that, but we're facing a Security Council where we're going to have great difficulty until the Chinese start showing the maturity the world power shows and Putin somehow begins to recognize that he's going to make himself basically an outlaw country. And by the way, I would dis-invite Putin from the next G8 meeting.”
McCain elaborated on China and referenced activist Martin Lee, who recently received backlash from Beijing for writing a critical article about the Chinese government in the Wall Street Journal.
“If I were in Taiwan today,” McCain said, “and I just saw what happened to Martin Lee in Hong Kong, I would be very nervous about a peaceful integration into China. Remember the promises they made about what would happen in Hong Kong once they reintegrated back into China? None of those have come true.”
When asked about the possibility of Egypt exploring a nuclear arms program, McCain did not claim to be well versed on the situation, but did say, “If you were the president of Eqypt, and you heard that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and probably has the capability to deliver them or has such close ties to terrorist organizations…I think that the reaction is probably one that is not unexpected. And again, proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region is an obvious result of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapons, and so I'm not surprised, although I don't know any of the details.”
