The new Palestinian foreign minister, Hamas member Mahmoud al-Zahar, got off to a bad start by slandering the United States, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said on Thursday.

Zahar said a day after being sworn in as a member of the new Palestinian cabinet that America was committing "big crimes" against Arab and Islamic countries.

He was responding to President George W. Bush's statement on Wednesday that the United States would not give aid to the Hamas-led government because it has expressed its desire to destroy Israel.

"We obviously unequivocally reject that proposition and I would note also to Foreign Minister Zahar that casual slander is an inauspicious way to begin," Bolton said during a U.N. Security Council meeting on the Middle East...