Ahmadinejad's "Countdown" For Israel Provokes Outrag World
December 13th 2006
by News Staff
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday provoked another outpouring of global condemnation Tuesday with a quiver of threats aimed at Israel, this time during a conference of academics summoned to question the reality of the Holocaust.
"With God's blessing, the countdown is now going ahead for the disintegration of Israel, and that is the will of all nations of the world," the Iranian leader told the second and last day of the international gathering.
Condemnation was sounded in Washington, Berlin and Rome Tuesday against the Iranian leader's remarks, and against the conference, which is aimed at minimizing the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million Jews under Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.
The gathering highlighted "how dangerous Israel's situation is and the threat that Israel has to live with," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, stressing that Germany would do all it could to oppose such meetings.
The comments by Ahmadinejad, the leader of one of the Middle East's most powerful and affluent states, came as his country is engaged in a power struggle with the international community over its nuclear programme.
Nuclear tensions have been rising elsewhere in the region after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and a top US official have openly conceded that Israel has nuclear weapons - a long-held open secret that Israel has officially denied for decades.
Since his election last year as president, Ahmadinejad has called for the destruction of Israel, by the Palestinians and other means.
On Tuesday, the president said the West "should abolish this self- created state."
"The West has created this regime, and now it must do away with it, so that peace returns to the world," Ahmadinejad said. Israel would suffer "nothing less than the same fate as that of the former Soviet Union."
Iran convened the gathering to question the Holocaust of World War II, and whether gas chambers were ever used to kill Jews. The Iranian leader has called for the formation of a so-called fact finding commission on the Holocaust.
Ahmadinejad said that after more than 60 years, the Holocaust should not be used "as propaganda and justification for further wars." The Palestinian people in particular, he said, could not help the crimes of World War II.
He made a point of embracing three rabbis critical of Israel who had taken part in the conference, remarking that a strict distinction should be made between Judaism and Zionism.
Eight rabbis - six from the United States and two from Austria - were among more than 60 foreign guests from 30 countries attending the conference. Tehran insisted delegates had been drawn from the historical, scientific and research fields.
Iranian Jews have protested the conference as an "insult, not only towards the Jews in Iran but also worldwide," according to remarks Monday by Maurice Motamed, the only Jewish MP in the Iranian parliament.
For the second time in as many days, the United States condemned the gathering and Ahmadinejad's prediction of Israel's fate as "absolutely outrageous."
"You get to a point where it's hard to find the words to describe the statements that are emanating from the Iranian president," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.
White House spokesman Tony Snow charged that Iran was trying to provide a "platform for hatred" by dismissing the historical fact of the atrocities of 6 million dead.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Berlin, who was meeting with Merkel, said the remarks showed "the unacceptable character of Iranian politics" and underscored the danger for Western cultures posed by such a regime.
Olmert paid homage to the 6 million Jews murdered by Hitler when he laid a wreath at a monument to Jews deported by train from a Berlin railway station.
The Vatican, while not referring to the conference, issued a statement calling the Holocaust "an immense tragedy" that should never be forgotten.
"The past century witnessed the attempt to exterminate the Jewish people ... The Shoah was an immense tragedy before which we cannot remain indifferent," the Vatican said.
Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, condemned the Tehran conference in a brief address at the Grunewald station.
"At this moment a band of criminals is sitting down together, denying the Shoa, soiling the memories of the victims, preaching the destruction of the state of Israel and planning other treacherous, evil deeds," she said.
While there have long been suspicions that Israel had nuclear bombs, a series of remarks in recent weeks from other quarters, including the incoming United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates, have openly confirmed Israel's nuclear ability.
Gates, speaking last week before the US Senate, said he thought Iran could be pursuing nuclear weapons "in the first instance as a deterrent."
"They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf," Gates said.
Ahmadinejad's "Countdown" For Israel Provokes Outrage
