UNITED NATIONS: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added to the controversy over his hostile attitude toward Israel and the Jews during a high-profile visit to New York last week.
The Iranian president raised new questions about the existence of the Holocaust and made other controversial remarks.
The Israeli government expressed anger that Ahmadinejad had even been let into the United States to attend the UN General Assembly. But despite his anti-US, anti-Israeli stance, the president appeared a confident leader as he fended off questions about his views and Iran’s nuclear programme during three days in New York.
Known for having doubted the mass slaughter of Jews during World War II, the hardline president declared that he had no problem with Jews, but with Zionists, the founders of Israel.
During meetings and press conference during his stay in the United States, Mr Ahmadinejad was repeatedly questioned about his past comments about the Holocaust. He replied that the matter needed “further study”.
“That’s a big lie that Zionists are Jews,” Iranian state media quoted Mr Ahmadinejad as saying at an unusual meeting with anti-Zionist rabbis just before he left New York.
“But their time is ending. Allah willing,” Mr Ahmadinejad added, according to CBS television which filmed the encounter in a New York hotel.
The group of rabbis, who believe Israel’s founding violated God’s will, praised the outspoken Mr Ahmadinejad. But the Israeli government and Jewish groups were outraged just by Mr Ahmadinejad’s presence in a city with a strong Jewish community.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said it was “a scandal” that Mr Ahmadinejad had been given a visa to enter the United States.
There were particular protests over a meeting that Mr Ahmadinejad had with 19 members of the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.
Some Jewish members of the council, including Nobel prize winner Elie Wiesel, threatened to resign because it was originally to be a formal dinner with Mr Ahmadinejad.
In the end there was a “working meeting” behind closed doors, that was still Mr Ahmadinejad’s highest level encounter with US representatives since he came to power.
The meeting chairman, Peter Peterson, said that he and other participants had told Mr Ahmadinejad that Americans were “horrified” by his views about the Holocaust which cost what the western historians claim the life of an estimated six million Jews.
Noting the 60 million deaths in World War II, the president replied: “Why is such prominence given to such a small portion of those 60 million.”
Robert Blackwill, a former deputy national security adviser under President George W. Bush, attended the meeting and later questioned whether negotiations with Mr Ahmadinejad’s regime were possible at all.
“If this man represents the prevailing government opinion in Tehran, we are headed for a massive confrontation with Iran,” Blackwill was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
Israel has made no secret of the fact that it considers Iran to be its biggest threat.
“There is no greater challenge to our values than that posed by the leaders of Iran,” foreign minister Livni told the UN General Assembly.
“They deny and mock the Holocaust. They speak proudly and openly of their desire to wipe Israel off the map. And now by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective, to imperil the region and to threaten the world.”—AFP
