Bush freezes assets of six top Hamas officials

WASHINGTON -- President Bush, responding to this week's deadly bus bombing in Jerusalem, froze the financial assets of six top officials of Hamas on Friday as well as five European charities said by the administration to be sending cash to the militants.

Bush said that Palestinians yearning for an independent state must "dismantle the terrorist network."

Bush said he had taken the action to freeze the assets because Hamas claimed responsibility for Tuesday's suicide attack on a packed bus in Jerusalem that killed 20 people.

He did not direct any criticism toward Israel during a brief question-and-answer session before attending a campaign fund raiser in Seattle. Israeli troops killed a political leader of the group in a missile strike Thursday and killed another militant Friday in a shootout at a hospital.

The president pledged to continue pushing for peace in the Middle East.

"I think it's important for the United States to continue to remain engaged, and I will," Bush said. "We'll just keep working the issue hard and remind people of this important fact, that if people want there to be peace in the Middle East -- Palestinians want to see their own state -- they've got to dismantle the terrorist network."

The president's executive order applies to assets of the Hamas leaders and the European charities which might be in U.S. banks.

Administration officials said they hoped that European nations would also issue orders freezing the assets.

Bush called on "all nations supportive of peace in the Middle East" to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization and to join the United States in freezing the groups' funds.

Treasury Department officials, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said they had received some encouraging signs that European nations would follow the U.S. lead in this case.

The European Union has until now insisted that it is necessary to differentiate between groups supporting the political wing of Hamas and the military wing, which has carried out dozens of deadly attacks in Israel.

Rudolf Gollia, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry of Austria, said late Friday that the country's counterterrorism agency already had investigated one of the groups, the Palestinian Association in Austria, and had found no evidence of wrongdoing or grounds for charges.

"Under Austrian law, there were no grounds for punitive action," Gollia told the Austria Press Agency.

The individuals, according to the Treasury Department are: Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas in Gaza; Imad Khalil Al-Alami, a member of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, Syria; Usama Hamdan, a senior Hamas leader in Lebanon; Khalid Mishaal, head of the Hamas political bureau and executive committee in Damascus, and himself a one-time target of Israeli assassins; Musa Abu Marzouk, deputy chief of the political bureau in Syria; and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, another political leader who narrowly escaped death in an Israeli missile attack in June.

The charities whose assets were frozen included a support group based in France called the Committee for Charity and Aid for the Palestinians; the Association for Palestinian Aid in Switzerland, which Treasury said was connected to the French group; the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund, or Interpal, headquartered in Britain; the Palestinian Association in Austria; and the Sanabil Association for Relief and Development, which is based in Lebanon.

Addressing Israel's actions, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said earlier in the day that "our focus is on getting the parties back together so they can work to resolve these issues."

"We've always said that Israel has the right to defend herself. We also always pointed out that the parties, including Israel, need to keep in mind the consequence of the actions that they take -- the effect of those actions on the peace process," McClellan told reporters.

In the Treasury briefing in Washington, officials refused to provide an estimate on how much in assets the Hamas officials and the charity groups might have deposited in either U.S. financial institutions or those in other countries. But they did agree that the amounts would be much larger in Europe, where the charities operate.