Western officials have reacted strongly to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's September 18 comments about the Holocaust.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, and his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier all attacked President Ahmadinejad for his speech. Gibbs condemned the comments, calling them "baseless, ignorant, and hateful", and claimed that they would only isolate Iran further. Miliband took it one step further, calling Ahmadinejad's remarks an “abhorrent as well as ignorant” outburst “not worthy of the leader of Iran. Iran's people have a great history and culture. I cannot believe that the vast majority of them want to rewrite this chapter of history rather than focus on the future. The coincidence of today's comments with the start of Jewish New Year only adds to the insult."
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier took the insults to their limits by targeting Ahmadinejad himself and calling him "a disgrace. Today's statements by the Iranian president are unacceptable," Steinmeier said in an 18 September statement. "With his intolerable tirades he is a disgrace to his country. This sheer anti-Semitism demands our collective condemnation. We will continue to confront it decisively in the future," he added.
Paris also took it upon itself to call Ahmadinejad's speech "appalling and unacceptable.”
This is while in his speech, Ahmadinejad did not deny the Holocaust, but raised some questions about the matter, asking Western powers for a logical answer. "If the Holocaust, as you claim, is true, why don't you allow a probe into the issue?" he asked, while calling the Zionist regime a symbol of lies and deception founded on “colonialist” attitudes.
The Iranian president also asked why Palestinians had to pay for the genocide of Jews at the hands of Europeans. Ahmadinejad was speaking on Qods, the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when, at the initiative of Iran's late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Muslims rally worldwide to show their support for Palestinians, who, like other Arab nations, have Semitic roots.
19 September 2009
More bad timing
Rico says everyone picks the wrong day to say the wrong things, and PressTV has the story of Ahmadinejad's turn:
No comments:
Post a Comment
No more Anonymous comments, sorry.