Kucinich to draw up Mideast peace deal

Washington- Fresh from a trip to the Middle East, Rep. Dennis Kucinich is ready to help craft "a comprehensive peace agreement" between Lebanon and Israel.

Presidents, diplomats and the United Nations have failed at that. Enter Kucinich, who failed to become president or establish a Cabinet-level Department of Peace but who did have a lot to do with saving Cleveland’s municipal electric system.

"I feel that one person can make a difference," the Cleveland Democrat said in an interview Tuesday. He has approaching it with "the same spirit that I went into when people said it was impossible to save a light system or a steel mill or hospitals" or the Pentagon’s finance and accounting office in Cleveland.

Kucinich has long cherished the ideal of world peace. But his optimism about the Middle East was shaped by a trip he and his wife, Elizabeth, took last week, financed by the Arab-American Community Center for Economic and Social Services.

During 2½ days in Lebanon, they saw villages that had been reduced to rubble. They saw "bombed-out hospitals, schools, factories, churches, mosques, fire stations, gas stations, cars, bridges, roads, water systems, electric systems, banana plantations and lemon groves," Kucinich said in an e-mail to supporters.

Yet he said villagers told him they did not hate Americans, even though some believed their family members were killed by an American-made bomb.

And, Kucinich said, they did not hate Israel, either, but wanted to be left in peace.

Kucinich spent less time in Israel, meeting with officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem. He did not visit scenes of Hezbollah attacks. He says Israeli officials told him there would be little to see because repairs were almost complete.

He and his wife also ran out of time, he said, because they had to drive 11 hours - across Lebanon, Syria and Jordan - after their flight from Lebanon to Israel was inexplicably canceled.

John Hexter, director of the Cleveland office of the American Jewish Committee, said the congressman clearly saw only one side of the conflict.

Kucinich said he will spend more time in Israel as soon as he can. He and his wife will prepare a series of reports on what they have learned, he said, and on their proposal for peace.

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