A former executive director of the Carter Center whose resignation from the institution has been a focal point of the furor over former President Jimmy Carter's new Middle East book said his decision to step down was a matter of "intellectual honesty."
In his first detailed public comments since his resignation last month, Kenneth W. Stein, who was the center's first executive director, told a Los Angeles audience Thursday that his concerns grew out of what he called Carter's "gross inventions, intentional falsehoods and irresponsible remarks."
Stein, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Emory University in Atlanta, said that in two of the most serious errors, Carter misrepresented the wording of a key U.N. resolution and gave a false account of a 1990 meeting he held with former Syrian President Hafez Assad, which Stein attended.
A spokeswoman for Carter, Deanna Congileo, said Friday that he was not available for comment. But Congileo noted that Carter and his publisher, Simon and Schuster, "have said that if there are any factual errors, they will be corrected in subsequent editions."
Stein, who was director of the Carter Center from 1983 to 1986 and had continued to serve as a fellow there, spoke to a crowd of nearly 1,000 Thursday night at Los Angeles' Sinai Temple. His comments came against a backdrop of escalating controversy over the former president's bestselling book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."
In the book, Carter traces the stops and starts of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, beginning with his first visit to Israel in 1973 and continuing to the present, through his 1977-1981 presidency and the historic peace accord he brokered between Israel and Egypt.
The book apportions blame for the ongoing conflict to Israel, the Palestinians and the United States, among others, but is most critical of Israel, saying its policies and long occupation of Palestinian lands have been the main obstacles to peace.
The book has drawn fire from American Jewish and pro-Israeli organizations and from former Middle East peace negotiator Dennis Ross, who accused Carter of using -- without permission -- maps Ross had created, and of mislabeling them in the book.
This week, 14 members of an advisory board to the Carter Center resigned in protest over the book and comments Carter has made suggesting that Israel's supporters in the U.S. have stifled debate over the Middle East. An organization of Reform rabbis has also said it would cancel a planned visit to the center.
