Monday, April 20, 2009

Plot against Ahmadinejad "defused"

According to Reuters:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted a walkout from his speech to a U.N. racism summit on Monday when he accused Israel of establishing a "cruel and repressive racist regime" over the Palestinians.
The Iranian press, however, puts a somewhat different spin on the incident: Fars News: "Urgent: Durban Conf. Participants Defuse Plot against Iranian President":
Thousands of participants at the Durban Review Conference in Geneva on Monday defused a plot by the Zionist lobbies to insult Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and heckle his inaugural address to the conference.

As the Iranian president was delivering a speech to the conference, a participant sought to insult him by throwing an object to his face, but over 4500 representatives of the NGOs and human rights activists attending the convention asked the Iranian president to continue his address and gave him repeated applause.

"I demand all participants to forgive them. They are uninformed people," Ahmadinejad said before going on with his speech.

Following the incident, a minority of representatives from 23 organizations and states left the hall in protest of Ahmadinejad's speech. But thousands of others, including the United Nations representatives remained in the hall as Ahmadinejad continued, calling Israel a cruel and racist state and accusing Zionists of using the Holocaust as an excuse to steal Arab land.

Ahmadinejad also called Zionism a form of racism.

Those who remained in the hall expressed support for Ahmadinejad's ideas all throughout the speech.

Zionist lobbies had long voiced their deep concerns over Ahmadinejad's attendance at the conference, saying that his presence could invoke decisions against the Israeli regime.

Earlier on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hassan Qashqavi described Ahmadinejad's presence in Durban 2 conference as a "premeditated and precise" move. [...]

A similar scenario faced failure when a few participants sought to heckle Ahmadinejad's address to a question-and-answer meeting at Columbo University in the US around two years ago.

While members of certain Zionist lobbies tried to stop the speech by the Iranian president at the University, thousands of participants inside and outside the hall gave Ahmadinejad repeated applause and asked him to continue his words.

Following the Colombo University incident two years ago, US hawks and pro-Israeli politicians expressed strong anger at the university President Lee Bollinger for his invitation to Ahmadinejad, and viewed the academic meeting as a failure for Washington policies to isolate Tehran, saying that Ahmadinejad had succeeded in delivering his ideas and message to the American community.
The founder of Colombo University

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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