Thursday, Sep 23, 2010
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)--Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday that most people believe the U.S. government orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks, setting off American fury at the U.N. General Assembly.
The U.S. led an enraged Western walkout after Ahmadinejad's latest incendiary remarks, which also attacked Israel and accused the West of monopolizing nuclear power--at a time when his country faces nuclear sanctions.
Two U.S. officials who had been watching the speech led the protest over the Sept. 11 comments.
The U.K. and other European Union delegations quickly followed after Ahmadinejad said most Americans believed their government was involved in the 2001 attacks. Canada boycotted the speech even before it started.
The Iranian president said there was a theory that "some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.
"The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view," he declared to the astonished chamber.
About 3,000 people died in the attacks by al Qaeda suicide attackers who hijacked jets and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.
The U.S. mission at the U.N. furiously slammed the Iranian leader in a statement released even before Ahmadinejad had finished speaking.
"Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people, Mr. Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable," said Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. mission.
Canada's Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon called Ahmadinejad's comments "unacceptable" and "a blatant violation of international standards and of the very spirit of the U.N."
The Iranian leader has frequently angered the U.S., Israeli and other delegations with his speeches at the U.N. General Assembly.
Last year there was a walkout after his comments which the U.S. mission then called "hateful, offensive and anti-Semitic rhetoric."
This year's speech also included inflammatory comments about Israel.
"The Zionists committed the most horrible crimes against the defenseless people in the wars against Lebanon and Gaza," Ahmadinejad told the assembly.
"The Zionist regime attacked a humanitarian flotilla in blatant defiance of all international norms and kills the civilians," he said, referring to an Israeli assault on a Turkish ship taking humanitarian aid to Gaza in May.
With Iran at the center of a growing international showdown over its nuclear program, Ahmadinejad went on to condemn "some" of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the U.K., China, France, Russia and the U.S.--for monopolizing nuclear power.
He said the criticism of Iran comes "at the same time they have continued to maintain, expand and upgrade their own nuclear arsenals."
He said that 2011 should be declared a year of nuclear disarmament--"Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None."
Western nations accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon and the U.N. has imposed four rounds of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Ahmadinejad didn't mention the dispute in his speech, which came only a few hours after U.S. President Barack Obama told the General Assembly that the door was still open to a negotiated settlement to the dispute.
On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with U.S. journalists that a U.S.-backed Israeli attack on his country's nuclear facilities could spark a war with "no limits."
The Iranian leader's annual visits to New York frequently cause controversy and he is always surrounded by a major security operation.
About 800 people including many of Iranian origin, protested outside U.N. headquarters Thursday.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
23-09-10 2137GMT
