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Iran's President President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses United Nations officials - Source: Reuters -
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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted a rare walk-out
at the United Nations when he called Israel a cruel and repressive
racist regime in his remarks to a conference on race.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored the address which
prompted dozens of delegates to leave their seats, further
undermining the summit which some Western powers including the
United States are boycotting.
"It was a very troubling experience for me as secretary-general,"
he told a news conference at the day's end.
"I have not seen, experienced, this kind of disruptive
proceedings of the assembly, the conference, by any one member
state. It was a totally unacceptable situation."
Washington announced on Saturday it would sit out the Geneva forum
on fears it would be dominated by unfair criticism against
Israel.
Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, Poland and the
Netherlands then followed suit.
Their boycott left Ahmadinejad, who has in the past cast doubt on
the Nazi Holocaust, in the spotlight as the only head of state at
the conference.
His speech produced exactly the kind of language that they feared,
which had also caused Canada and Israel to announce months ago they
would stay away.
"Following World War Two they resorted to military aggressions to
make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish
suffering," Ahmadinejad told the conference, on the day that Jewish
communities commemorate the Holocaust.
"And they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other
parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist
government in the occupied Palestine," he said, according to the
official translation.
"And in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism
in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive
racist regime in Palestine."
US calls speech vile
Washington decried Ahmadinejad's speech as vile and hateful, while
the Vatican called it extremist and unacceptable.
Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, called
the address both unsavoury and obnoxious.
"I was shocked and deeply saddened by everything he said," she told
journalists.
"I don't think, though, that his behaviour provided any
justification for any other member state to walk out from this
conference."
Dozens of diplomats in the audience promptly got up and left the
hall for the duration of the speech. While most returned when
Ahmadinejad finished speaking, the Czech Republic said its
delegation would no longer take part in the conference.
"Such outrageous anti-Semitic remarks should have no place in a UN
anti-racism forum," said British ambassador Peter Gooderham, whose
country chose not to send a minister to Geneva.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store told the plenary after
Ahmadinejad's speech that Iran had isolated itself.
"Norway will not accept that the odd man out hijacks the
collective efforts of the many," he said.
However, a number of the delegations that remained behind applauded
Ahmadinejad.
Ban, who had held a meeting with Ahmadinejad before the address,
said it was "deeply regrettable" that the Iranian leader had
ignored his plea to avoid causing upset.
"I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian President to
accuse, divide and even incite," he said.
"We must all turn away from such a message in both form and
substance."
Earlier on Monday, Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland in
protest about the conference and Israeli officials also voiced
anger at a meeting that Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz held on
Sunday with Ahmadinejad.
Arab and Muslim attempts to single out the Jewish state for
criticism had prompted the United States to walk out of the first
UN summit on racism, in South Africa in 2001.
Although a declaration prepared for the follow-up conference does
not refer explicitly to Israel or the Middle East, its first
paragraph reaffirms a text adopted at the 2001 meeting which
includes six paragraphs on those sensitive issues.
