US walks out as Iran delivers anti-US speech

Iran’s Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad addresses the 66th ses­sion of the United Nations Gen­eral Assem­bly, Thurs­day. (ASSOCIATED PRESS | RICHARD DREW)

EDITH M. LEDERER

Asso­ci­ated Press

UNITED NATIONS — Amer­i­can diplo­mats led a walk­out at the U.N. Gen­eral Assem­bly Thurs­day as Iran’s Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad fiercely attacked the United States and major West Euro­pean nations as “arro­gant pow­ers” ruled by greed and eager for mil­i­tary adventurism.

The two U.S. diplo­mats, who spe­cial­ize in the Mid­dle East, were fol­lowed out of the cham­ber by diplo­mats from more than 30 coun­tries. They included the 27 Euro­pean Union mem­bers, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Soma­lia, Liecht­en­stein, Monaco, San Marino and Mace­do­nia, a U.N. diplo­mat said. Israel boy­cotted the speech.

Ahmadenijad’s fiery anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli rhetoric has been a sta­ple of the Gen­eral Assembly’s min­is­te­r­ial meetings.

Last year, Ahmadine­jad pro­voked a walk­out by the U.S., EU, and oth­ers when he said a major­ity of peo­ple in the United States and around the world believe the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment staged the Sept. 11, 2001 ter­ror attacks in an attempt to assure Israel’s survival.

The provoca­tive com­ments prompted the U.S. del­e­ga­tion to walk out of Ahmadinejad’s U.N. speech, where he also blamed the U.S. as the power behind U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil sanc­tions against Iran for its refusal to halt ura­nium enrich­ment, a tech­nol­ogy that can be used as fuel for elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion or to build nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad’s speech pit­ted the poverty and unhap­pi­ness of most coun­tries against the riches and power of the U.S. and unnamed Euro­pean nations that he accused of per­pet­u­at­ing wars, caus­ing the cur­rent global eco­nomic cri­sis and infring­ing on “the rights and sov­er­eignty of nations.”

He attacked the United States and Euro­pean colo­nial pow­ers for abduct­ing tens of mil­lions of Africans and mak­ing them slaves, for their readi­ness “to drop thou­sands of bombs on other coun­tries,” and for dom­i­nat­ing the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil He sin­gled out the U.S. for using a nuclear bomb against Japan in World War II and impos­ing and sup­port­ing mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ships and total­i­tar­ian regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

“It is as lucid as day­light that the same slave mas­ters and colo­nial pow­ers that once insti­gated the two world wars have caused wide­spread mis­ery and dis­or­der with far-reaching effects across the globe since then,” Ahmadine­jad said. “Do these arro­gant pow­ers really have the com­pe­tence and abil­ity to run or gov­ern the world?”

The Iran­ian pres­i­dent answered by call­ing for “the shared and col­lec­tive man­age­ment of the world in order to put an end to the present dis­or­ders, tyranny and dis­crim­i­na­tions world­wide.” Last year, he said “the future belongs to Iran” and chal­lenged the U.S. to accept that his coun­try has a major role in the world.

Ahmadine­jad made no men­tion of his dis­puted re-election in June 2009 when secu­rity forces sys­tem­at­i­cally crushed oppo­si­tion protests, the cur­rent inter­nal polit­i­cal tur­moil that has sharply dimin­ished his power, or Iran’s nuclear pro­gram which the U.S. and its allies believe is aimed at pro­duc­ing nuclear weapons.

“While Pres­i­dent Ahmadine­jad is lec­tur­ing the world from the U.N. podium,” Human Rights Watch’s U.N. Direc­tor Philippe Bolo­p­ion said, “dis­sent is still being crushed ruth­lessly in Iran and basic rights demanded by mil­lions in the Arab world are bru­tally denied to Ira­ni­ans who are demand­ing the same.”

“The world assem­bly should take with a grain of salt the remarks of a leader who said noth­ing about the pub­lic hang­ing yes­ter­day of a 17-year-old in his own coun­try,” he said.

In his speech, Ahmadine­jad noted “the wide­spread awak­en­ing in Islamic lands … (in) the pur­suit of the real­iza­tion of jus­tice, free­dom and the cre­ation of a bet­ter tomor­row.” He said “our great nationa stands ready to join hands with other nations to march on this beau­ti­ful path.”

The Iran­ian leader accused the U.S. of threat­en­ing to place sanc­tions on any­one who ques­tions the Holo­caust and the Sept. 11 attacks with sanc­tions and mil­i­tary action.

With­out nam­ing the United States, he asked: “Who imposed, through deceits and hypocrisy, the Zion­ism and over 60 years of war, home­less­ness, ter­ror and mass mur­der on the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple and on coun­tries in the region?”

Ahmadine­jad accused some uniden­ti­fied Euro­pean coun­tries of still using the Holo­caust “as the excuse to pay fine or ran­som to the Zion­ists.” He also said any ques­tion about the foun­da­tion of Zion­ism is con­demned by the U.S. “as an unfor­giv­able sin.”

Mark Korn­blau, spokesman for the U.S. Mis­sion to the United Nations, said: “Mr. Ahmadine­jad had a chance to address his own people’s aspi­ra­tions for free­dom and dig­nity, but instead he again turned to abhor­rent anti-Semitic slurs and despi­ca­ble con­spir­acy theories.”

When the idea of an inde­pen­dent fact-finding inves­ti­ga­tion of “the hid­den ele­ments” involved in the Sept. 11 attacks was raised last year, he said, “my coun­try and myself came under pres­sure and threat by the gov­ern­ment of the United States.”

“Instead of assign­ing a fact-finding team, they killed the main per­pe­tra­tor and threw his body into the sea,” Ahmadine­jad said, refer­ring to the U.S. military’s killing of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in early May.

“Would it not have been rea­son­able to bring to jus­tice and openly to trial the main per­pe­tra­tor of the inci­dent in order to iden­tify the ele­ments behind the safe space pro­vided for the invad­ing air­craft to attack the twin world trade tow­ers?,” he asked.

Posted by AP News on Sep 22 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.