The U.S. State Department is shelling out $16,000 to send Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind Park51, on a three-country Middle East tour:

Rauf will leave New York and travel to Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, a State Department official tells The Cable. The cost of the trip is $16,000.
The State Department has no knowledge or control of the specifics of what Rauf will talk about as he tours the region, but officials note that his agenda could not be more directly related to the backlash against his project, still slated to be built in Lower Manhattan.
“His program is about religious diversity and tolerance in America. Will he relate that to his personal situation? Probably,” another State Department official said.
The State Department has been shy about talking about Rauf and the trip, ostensibly to avoid wading into the controversy over the community center. But that didn’t stop officials from posting New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s impassioned defense of the project on the State Department-run Web site America.gov. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that because the site is directed at foreign audiences, State was not violating the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibits the U.S. government from spreading propaganda inside American borders.
Rauf’s trip is organized by the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs and will not include any fundraising. This is his third trip with the State Department; the first was in 2007 under the George W. Bush administration. Rauf also visited Egypt in January.

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