This is older item - Jesse Jackson is a one man self-serving band; however, the article shows how sincere and uninformed and just plain stupid this man really is......the great humanitarian wanting to work with butchers? Rings in his fingers and bells on his toes - and he shall have music, wherever he goeth? Saba GO Kids | GO Family | GO Money | GO Sports | GO Home ABCNEWS WEB ABOUT GO NETWORK | SIGN IN | FREE E-MAIL HOME NEWS SUMMARY U.S. POLITICS WORLD Raw News BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HEALTH&LIVING TRAVEL ESPN SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT WEATHER.com REFERENCE LOCAL ABCNEWS ON TV WORLD HEADLINES Major Oil Find Could Rile Markets Jesse Jackson's West Africa Trip Delayed U.S. Envoy Pushes Peace Amid Clashes Ethiopia Reports Heavy Gains in Conflict with Eritrea FAA Releases EgyptAir Tape SEARCH ABC.com EMAIL ABCNEWS.com SEND PAGE TO A FRIEND TOOLS AND HELPERS Peace Mission Delayed White House Postpones Jesse Jackson's Trip to West Africa The Rev. Jesse Jackson, shown addressing Connecticut lawmakers on April 26, is backtracking on remarks that offended Sierra Leone's government and many human rights activists � and caused the White House to postpone his African peace mission. (Bob Child/AP Photo) By Rebecca Cooper W A S H I N G T O N, May 16 � The White House has postponed presidential envoy Jesse Jackson's planned peace mission to West Africa due to controversial comments by the civil rights leader that have caused a rift with the government of Sierra Leone. "Reverend Jackson is going to delay his trip by at least a day," a senior Clinton administration official told ABCNEWS. "We thought it was useful to give the situation a day to vent and air out and then see where we are." As the White House spent today trying to salvage the mission, Jackson spent the day on the phone with reporters, backtracking from comments that infuriated not only the government of Sierra Leone, but human rights activists and others seeking peace in the small, violence-ridden but diamond-rich nation. Unwelcome Remarks On Friday, Jackson told reporters on a conference call that he hoped to bring rebel leader Foday Sankoh and his Revolutionary United Front into the mainstream of Sierra Leone politics. Jackson suggested a new peace agreement should allow the RUF to play a political role in the country similar to that of the African National Congress in South Africa. Sankoh has been roundly condemned by human rights groups, the United States and other observers for gruesome atrocities against civilian during Sierra Leone's eight-year civil war, including his practice of ordering RUF troops to chop limbs off any civilians suspecting of voting for the current government. But in his comments Friday, Jackson defended his plan to include Sankoh in peace negotiations, saying, "The voice of the RUF in Sierra Leone is Foday Sankoh's voice, and his voice would be a very positive one." Jackson further enraged the Sierra Leone government when he suggested that all parties � including the current government � share the blame for mutilations and killings of innocent civilians. "When you are trying to end these kinds of wars, when there's blood on every side and no clean hands, you must get the best resource you can to achieve the best end of getting us back around the table," Jackson told reporters. Misunderstanding Jackson was back on the phone today, this time holding a conference call with Sierra Leonan journalists to back away from his earlier remarks in an attempt to pacify both the government of Sierra Leone and other African and Asian nations providing U.N. peacekeeping troops in the region. Sankoh's forces have been blamed for recent killings of peacekeepers in Sierra Leone and the disappearance of hundreds of blue-helmeted U.N. soldiers, believed to have been taken hostage by RUF forces. Jackson began the call by making a prepared statement, saying, "I would like to clarify comments I made on Friday, May 12, which have apparently been misunderstood in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. First and foremost, I would like to make it clear that Foday Sankoh and the RUF alone are responsible for the current crisis in Sierra Leone." Jackson went on to explain: "There must be no misunderstanding about what I meant to convey when I mentioned the African National Congress in my [earlier] comments. The purpose was not to compare the RUF and the ANC. There is no equivalence between the two. My intention was merely to note that the ANC became a part of the political process. � We cannot and will not give up our efforts to bring about a political solution to the problem in Sierra Leone. But it is up to the people and government of Sierra Leone to decide the contours of that solution." State Department Denials Officials from the State Department tried to deny that the delay of the Jackson mission was due to the political problems created by the envoy's comments. "Don't try to read too much in to the delay," one official said today. "This is a logistics problem having to do with planes or something like that." But with the flap continuing to unfold as the day worn on, the White House was forced to concede that, due to Jackson's remarks, the diplomatic mission was being grounded before it ever took off. "We assessed the current situation in the region," one senior official told ABCNEWS. "We decided delaying the trip gives him a better opportunity to accomplish what he originally set out to do." Translation: The government of Sierra Leone is in no mood to negotiate with Jesse Jackson today. Maybe tomorrow. 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