America
'Half of Americans disapprove of inviting Netanyahu to address Congress'
Washington, March 2
Nearly half of American
voters think that US House Speaker John Boehner should not have invited
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address US Congress without
having consulted the White House, according to a new poll released
Sunday.
A total of 48 percent of those surveyed believed
Boehner's decision to invite Netanyahu without first notifying President
Barack Obama was not appropriate, while 30 percent said Republicans
should have done so, and another 22 percent said they didn't know enough
to answer, according to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The
results came amid rising tensions between the Israeli leader and
President Obama. The White House said Obama would not meet with
Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, D.C., citing that the visit
comes in too close proximity to Israeli elections, Xinhua reported.
Netanyahu,
who views a nuclear Iran as an existential threat to the state of
Israel, is expected to reiterate his objections to the negotiations over
Iran's nuclear programme during his planned speech to US Congress
Tuesday. He flew to the US Sunday.
Susan Rice, Obama's national
security advisor, last week called Netanyahu's scheduled speech
"destructive" to the relationship between the US and Israel. US
Secretary of State John Kerry also slammed Netanyahu for his opposition
to the ongoing Iran talks.
The poll surveyed 800 registered voters from February 25 to 28, with a margin error of 3.5 percentage points.