Jimmy Carter met today with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal despite protests from the US State Department and the Israeli government. A Hamas deputy told the AP the agenda would include strategies to calm tensions between Israel and Hamas, as well as the fate of a kidnapped Israeli soldier. Carter has said that the group must be engaged for peace talks to make progress.
"He's giving this image some sort of recognition with one of the world's most brutal arch terrorists and, worst of all, I think Jimmy Carter is forgetting the lessons of 9/11," an Israeli minister told the BBC of the Nobel laureate's series of meetings with Hamas brass this week. "And Jimmy Carter, in a way, is forgetting his own legacy." (More Jimmy Carter stories.)