Humbled Biden apologizes to UAE after accusing it of terrorism funding
US Vice President Joe Biden has made the latest in a series of chastening apologies, after the United Arab Emirates expressed “astonishment” at his Thursday remarks. Biden called US allies “the biggest problem” in fighting terrorism in the Middle East.
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Biden called Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince and Deputy Defense Minister
Mohammed bin Zayed on Sunday to reaffirm the allies’ shared
perspective on terrorism, the official Emirates news agency WAM
reported.
Earlier on the same day, the UAE’s Foreign Minister Mohammed
Gargash accused Biden of making remarks “which are far from
the truth, especially with relation to the UAE's role in
confronting extremism and terrorism and its clear and advanced
position in recognizing the dangers, including the danger of
financing terrorism and terrorist groups.”
“The UAE’s counter-terrorism approach reflects a pioneering
national commitment that recognises the extent of the danger
posed by terrorism to the region and to its people,” said
Gargash in a press release.
The assertions were in stark contrast to the incendiary remarks
Biden uttered in an unguarded moment during a Q&A at Harvard
University on Thursday, in which the official accused the UAE,
Saudi Arabia, and Turkey of inciting radical Sunni elements to
raise their weapons against Assad, who belongs to a sect of Shia
Islam.
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“What did they [the three countries] do? They poured hundreds
of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into
anyone who would fight against Assad – except that the people who
were being supplied were Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaida and the
extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the
world,” said Biden.
Biden has since officially apologized to Turkey, which was also quick to take
offense, with President Tayyip Erdogan saying Biden could nowbe
“history to me.”
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president lashes out at Joe Biden over ISIS comments
Perhaps most frustrating for the politician with a history of
loose-lipped statements is that Secretary of State John Kerry had
made a virtually identical statement less than a fortnight
earlier, saying that funding anti-Assad troops has been a
“sloppy process” that led to the rise of ISIS. The
statements had been voiced before, with Gulf states accused of
funding militant groups fighting the Syrian government.
The US, which withdrew its troops from Iraq in 2011 and had
avoided directly interfering in the Syrian conflict, has been
dragged back into an armed confrontation with the Islamic State
(IS, ISIS / ISIL). The radical Islamist organization has executed
a series of successful offensives and has gained control over
large swathes of Iraq and Syria since the summer.
A US-led coalition has responded with airstrikes, but is now
contemplating a ground invasion to regain control of the region.
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