KUWAIT -- Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson decided to cut short his tour of the Persian Gulf Wednesday to return to Chicago to bury his friend, Mayor Harold Washington, saying 'this is one of the saddest days of my life.'
'There is no doubt when a tree of Harold's magnitude falls, there is sorrow in the forest,' Jackson said hours after arriving in Kuwait at the start of a tour that had been expected to last a week.
'He has left a great legacy. Harold is for all of us,' Jackson said, his voice hoarse and eyes red. 'This is one of the saddest days of my life.'
Jackson's trip coordinator, James Zogby, said Jackson would attend a Thanksgiving service in Kuwait, go to Bahrian Friday morning and leave from Saudi Arabia later in the day.
Zogby said Jackson's plans to visit Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Jordan were off, at least until December.
'He feels very strongly that he belongs in Chicago now. He's very moved by this situation and is aware of its gravity. But we have some tidying up to do here and we want to close the trip off in a dignified fashion,' Zogby said.
Several hours before Jackson's arrival in Kuwait, suspected arsonists set a small fire outside the offices of the American Life Insurance Co., causing minor damage to the unoccupied building but no injuries, the Interior Ministry said.
'A preliminary investigation has shown that the fire was caused by incendiary materials which were put outside the door of the company's office,' the statment said. It said security forces were investigating.
It was the second attack at American offices in the emirate and the 11th such incident this year. No one claimed responsiblity but the earlier attacks, all bombings, were blamed on suspected Iranian-backed Moslem extremists.
Jackson, the Democratic frontrunner, arrived in Kuwait Wednesday night. Western diplomatic sources said senior Kuwaiti officials would express to him their continued support for the U.S. program of escorting U.S.-registered Kuwaiti tankers through the treacherous gulf waters.
Jackson has questioned the policy that has led to the largest U.S. naval buildup since the Vietnam War and at least three confrontations with Iranian forces in the gulf.
'We want to get as much information as we can, so when we return we can inform the American public as best we can as to what our options are,' Jackson said in New York before his departure Tuesday.
'We need to know how long we expect to have such a high visibility military presence there, how much is the cost, and what are energy as well as military alternatives as the Persian Gulf war continues,' he said.
Much of the limelight of Jackson's weeklong tour was dimmed by the U.S. Navy's refusal to allow the black civil rights leader and Democratic frontrunner to visit with the thousands of American servicemen aboard U.S. warships in the gulf.
He said during a stopover in London he would assess the effectiveness of the U.S. Naval escorts but added, 'there is no division of our support for our troops who are there.'
Jackson also said he would be seeking an end to the 7-year-old Iran-Iraq war and renewing his efforts to try to free U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Before leaving the United States, Jackson met with U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar on his efforts to mediate a cease-fire between the warring neighbors.
