Iran's Khatami: Suicide bombers hurt Islam

Former Iranian President Muhammad Khatami on Friday condemned the September 11 attacks against the United States as an atrocity and said suicide bombers did Islam an injustice and would not go to heaven.

Three days before the fifth anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, the Shiite cleric urged Muslims to work against "Islamaphobia," which he said had grown since Islamic terrorists flew hijacked aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

Khatami during US visit. Slams terrorism (Photo: AP)

Two crimes were committed on September 11 - civilians were killed and it was done in the name of Islam, Khatami told the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a human rights group.

"We Muslims should condemn these atrocities even more strongly," he said.

"Terrorist, which means killing of civilians, is a human being that lacks morality ... (and) will not go to heaven" and those who do it in the name of Islam "are lying," he said.

Pro-Israel group: Khatami white-washed Iran's nuclear program

Nearing the end of a five-city US visit in which he largely stressed themes of dialogue and co-existence, Khatami continued to stir controversy.

A US-based pro-Israel group, the Israel Project, complained in a press release that the president from 1997 to 2005 was "working to white-wash Iran's record of nuclear developments, support for terror and human rights violations."

In a Time magazine interview, Khatami regretted the 1979 US hostage crisis and acknowledged the Holocaust of 6 million Jews as "historical fact."

"I believe the Holocaust is the crime of Nazism. But it is possible that the Holocaust, which is an absolute fact, a historical fact, would be misused. The Holocaust should not be, in any way, an excuse for the suppression of Palestinian rights," he said.

As for the 1979 hostage crisis, when student radicals seized the US Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans for 444 days, Khatami said, "I regret the hostage crisis ... and I sympathize with the hostages and their families for their loss and their hurt but this was (also) a revolutionary reaction to half a century of the US taking Iran hostage."

Mistrust between Tehran, Washington

Khatami is the most prominent Iranian to visit the United States, outside of the United Nations' New York headquarters, in decades. Ahmadinejad spoke at the UN General Assembly last year and has requested a visa to do so again this year.

Khatami's US visit has been controversial in light of US accusations Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, sponsors terrorism and arms Hizbullah gunmen in Lebanon.

At a news conference on Thursday, Khatami warned the United States against threatening Iran. While urging a dialogue among civilizations, he said there was too much mistrust for Washington and Tehran to talk now.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters, "the place to start when talking about the discourse of threats is with his own president, President Ahmadinejad, in threatening to wipe the state of Israel off the map."

Khatami told Time he got "really upset" with President George W. Bush's designation of Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and he praised America as a "great and big country."