Region | Iran
Ahmadinejad's UN speech upsets many
It was business as usual for the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on Tuesday.
- By Layelle Saad, Deputy Editor GCC/Middle East
- Published: 23:39 September 24, 2008
- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
- Image Credit: AP
Dubai: It was business as usual for the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on Tuesday.
In his usual anti-Israeli rhetoric, he warned the Jewish state, saying "it is on the definite slope to collapse and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters".
"Ahmadinejad's speech was pure propaganda," the Gulf Research Centre scholar Dr Mustafa Alani told Gulf News.
Ahmadinejad's comments were received angrily by the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, who retorted: "It is again a repetition of the darkest accusations in the name of Hitler and almost anti-Semitism."
US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama came out even stronger against the Iranian President's remarks.
Condemned
"I strongly condemn President Ahmadinejad's outrageous remarks at the UN and am disappointed that he had a platform to air his hateful and anti-Semitic views," Obama said in a statement while on the campaign trail in Clearwater, Florida.
US President George W. Bush, like Ahmadinejad, revealed no surprises in his farewell address to the UN. He denounced Iran and Syria as sponsors of global terrorism.
Many observers pointed out a lack of passion on the part of the US President, compared to previous years when he was trying to build a coalition against Iraq in the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
During Bush's speech, Ahmadinejad appeared disinterested, waving to people in the galleries and gave a thumbs down to his aide.
"Both President Bush and Ahmadinejad suffer from a credibility crisis, but perhaps Bush's speech had a slight edge over the Iranian President due to the relative security improvements currently witnessed in Iraq," Dr Alani explained.
Prior to his speech, Bush met with the Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, to discuss the Marriott hotel bombing that rocked Islamabad over the weekend.
Addressing the rift in US-Pakistan relations, Bush emphasised that the US was determined to help Pakistan defend its sovereignty.
In a special meeting, President Bush, along with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, thanked the handful of remaining countries in the coalition involved in the war in Iraq.
"A lot of people around the world have made sacrifices, along with the Iraqi people, that enabled a country to emerge from the shadows of tyranny," Bush told representatives of the nation during the meeting.
"The [UN] General Assembly has suffered from its own credibility crisis, as nations use it as a platform to bolster their own positions void of any diplomatic substance," Dr Alani said.
A bump in the otherwise normal convention occurred when Russia pulled out of a high-level ministerial meeting to address Iran's nuclear enrichment programme.
Russia, who has a seat on the UN Security Council, pulled out of the talks with the other four members, plus Germany, apparently angered at US condemnation over its war with Georgia.
"We see no 'fire alarm' which would require us to put off other things in the extremely busy week of the UN General Assembly and meet in emergency [session] on the Iranian nuclear problem," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said.
Since the Georgia war last month, Washington has sought to exclude Russia from several G8 conference calls and threatened to isolate Moscow from some international institutions.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy also had strong words for Russia, saying they should not use force to settle disputes.
On Iran he said the European Union would never tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, "which would endanger the peace and stability of an entire region, nor can it tolerate Iran calling for the destruction of ... Israel."
He acknowledged the West could not enforce a fourth round of sanctions on Iran.
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