Ahmadinejad: No incitement
צילום: AFP
Iran: UN's response to president's speech irrelevant
Iran responds to Ban Ki-moon's denouncement of Ahmadinejad's speech given during 'Durban II'
Iran defended on Wednesday its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denunciation of Israel as a racist state that caused dozens of delegates to stream out of a United Nations racism conference on Monday in protest.
"There was neither any accusation nor any incitement," Tehran's delegate told the plenary in response to those critical of Ahmadinejad's address, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who had called the speech "deeply regrettable."
"The Islamic Republic of Iran strongly rejects such irrelevant statements and considers them totally unacceptable and out of context," the delegate said.
The UN secretary general, who did not leave the hall during Ahmadinejad's speech, responded to the Iranian president's referral to Israel as a "most cruel and racist regime" during his speech in Geneva on Monday in a written statement issued by his office.
"I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian President to accuse, divide and even incite. This is the opposite of what this conference seeks to achieve," Ban said in the statement.
"It is deeply regrettable that my plea to look to the future of unity was not heeded by the Iranian President." Ban added that he had "reminded the President that the UN General Assembly had adopted the resolutions to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism and to reaffirm the historical facts of the Holocaust respectively."
