UN condemns Iran's call for Israel's destruction amid international outcry
AFP
Date: 10-28-05
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The UN Security Council condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Israel should be wiped off the map, amid an international outcry over the comment.
"The Security Council condemns the remarks about Israel attributed to Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the Islamic republic of Iran," said a statement read by the president of the council for the month, Romanian ambassador Mihnea Motoc.
Britain had pushed strongly for the resolution, with London's UN envoy Emyr Jones Parry describing Ahmadinejad's remarks as "totally out of keeping with the charter of the United Nations".
A British diplomat said a statement adopted by the 25-member European Union at the Hampton Court summit in London Thursday was circulated in the council.
In their statement, the EU leaders "condemned in the strongest terms" the Iranian leader's words.
"Calls for violence, and for the destruction of any state, are manifestly inconsistent with any claim to be a mature and responsible member of the international community," they said.
Turkey expressed disapproval of the Iranian's words, and said Ankara would make no changes to its flourishing ties with the Jewish state.
"Naturally it is not possible for us to approve of such a statement," the Turkish foreign ministry said.
Spain said Ahmadinejad's rhetoric had no place in civilized society. But with Ahmadinejad standing by his incendiary words and Iran holding an annual anti-Israeli hate fest with huge rallies across the country, 25,000 Muslims rallied in northern Nigeria's largest city of Kano to support the call for Israel's destruction.
In a statement Thursday UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed dismay at the Iranian leader's call and reminded all member states that Israel was a long-standing United Nations member "with the same rights and obligations as every other member."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Iran should be expelled from the United Nations.
"No member state that calls for violence, death and destruction, as the president of Iran did ... deserves a seat in this civilized body, the United Nations," the Israeli UN envoy said in letters to Annan and the current president of the Security Council.
In Rome, a Vatican statement said: "The grave events of the past days in the Holy Land have caused great concern in the Holy See, which in unison with the international community strongly condemns all acts of violence: the terrorist attack in Hadera (in northern Israel), the reprisals which followed and particularly grave and unacceptable comments denying the right to existence of Israel."
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said that "In an alliance of civilisations such words have no place," adding that governments had a "commitment to accept, hold a dialogue with and respect their fellows."
The Hungarian government summoned Tehran's ambassador to protest the remarks by the Iranian president, saying "Hungary considers it unprecedented that the head of state of a UN member state threaten the existence of another UN member by calling for it to be 'wiped off the map.'"
But in Kano, northern Nigeria, some 25,000 Muslims turned out to support the Ahmadinejad call.
The Shiite demonstrators under the auspices of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria marched through the city, a hotbed of religious and ethnic strife in the country, chanting solidarity slogans.
"What Ahmadinejad said was very clear. Israel is an illegal state which was only created after the usurpation of the Palestinian homeland," their spokesman Mohammed Turi told reporters in front of the central mosque.
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