Jewish and Muslim protesters heckled US first lady Laura Bush when she visited a flashpoint Jerusalem shrine today during a Middle East goodwill tour.
Dozens of nationalist Jews demanding Washington free convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard shouted and waved placards at Mrs Bush at the ancient Western Wall. They were kept back by Israeli police and US Secret Service agents.
She inserted a small handwritten note in a cleft of the wall and paused there for about 60 seconds before returning to her heavily-guarded motorcade for the short trip to the adjacent Dome of the Rock mosque. A crowd jostled Bush as she entered the mosque and a Palestinian worshipper cried at her: "You are not welcome here. Why are you hassling our Muslims? How dare you come in here?"
She did not respond to him or a woman inside the mosque who shouted "Koran, Koran" at her in Arabic.
Mrs Bush exited with police linking arms around her to ward off onlookers. She began a Middle East trip on Friday acknowledging that the US image in the Muslim world had been badly damaged by a prisoner abuse scandal and a magazine report, since retracted, that US interrogators desecrated the Koran.
The disturbances during her trip to the Jerusalem holy site showed "what an emotional place this is as we go from each one of these very very holy spots to the next," Mr Bush said later during a stop in Jericho.