Ignatieff to crawl to Israel soon

Well he'll probably fly there actually but the point is that he now wants to wriggle away from remarks he made describing the atrocity at Qana as a "war crime." This followed him saying that he was "not losing any sleep" over Qana. Here's the Canadian Globe and Mail:

Mr. Ignatieff sought again yesterday to temper the tone of his "war- crime" remark without retracting it, and made the unexpected announcement that he will take part in a three-day visit to Israel next month organized for MPs by the Canada-Israel Committee. The trip will include a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Mr. Ignatieff said it was unacceptable for Mr. Harper to label his war-crime remark anti-Israel because it was based on reports by groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights watchdog group B'Tselem -- although he acknowledged that Israel contests those accounts.

"But it is precisely because there is a debate on that -- the reports that I cited are controversial, they are not accepted by the state of Israel -- that I will visit Israel to listen to their point of view," Mr. Ignatieff told reporters in Toronto.

So now Igantieff has described Qana as no big deal, a war crime and a tragedy. Let's see what he says after Olmert has explained it to him.